Just this afternoon my mother and I were discussing this subject. She said she'd always thought she would want to be taken off any kind of life support, but now she feels like it would be selfish to ask any of her children to sign off on that and have to live with it.
I'd just wonder what would happen if one year later the medical community came up with a new procedure that could've helped me if I'd been kept alive. How would my loved ones feel if that happened? I figure if God wants to call me home, He'll do it with or without machines. If I'm still alive, it's not my time yet.
Good thing your mother has thought about this, I fear many people don't think it thru.
Just think of themselves, picturing diapers and such.
I too, don't want that, but feel it would be way more harmful to force my kids into watching a dehydration death, and the guilt that surely must go with it.
My mother had terminal cancer but her mind was ok. The doc and nurses kept asking her to sign herself onto hospice (does not have to be outside of your home) but she refused. She made me promise to never put her in a nursing home. While an inpatient about 2 months later, she was finally convinced that the only option was to sign herself into hospice. She asked me to do it (right in front of her) and that is the only way I ever would have done that. That was a Thursday - she died peacefully that Sunday. Oh, and even while in hospice, they brought her meals, so starvation was not in the picture.