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#408. I don't know if all of that is true or not. I made the decision to have one put in my elderly aunt against the advice of many. I don't know if the doctor liked it or not, but he did it. Some people thought I did a terrible thing. All the people I consulted were against it, hospital chaplain, priest, Presbyterian minister (he didn't say not to but that he had a living will only wanting water, but he wasn't keen on it), nurse.

I have never regretted it, and my aunt died a relatively peaceful, natural death. Thinking back on it, one nurse got me cornered and tried to intimidate me into not doing it. I just ignored them all. I prayed really hard about what was the right thing to do in that situation. My aunt was cognizant when we discussed it, but wouldn't say one way or another what she wanted and then worsened to the point she could no longer express her wishes.

In the discussion with her minister, I brought up that this had never come up in our family before, and my aunt agreed that was true.

Anyway, once in, I don't know if I could have ordered it out or not. My sister was the only person who encouraged me because she travels in exalted circles which includes medical professionals and she knew that death by starvation was a painful process.

I was the one who had to ok the insertion. Looking back, I was pretty naive. They had a DNR on her chart or whatever, and I never ordered that and I'm sure she didn't. The doctor probably did that. Who gets to decide on DNR's? This was in Illinois.