My apologies for the belated reply from your last post. Three months after my fathers terminal life altering accident on November 25th, 1996, I remember doctors confronting my mother and asking her if she wanted to have them remove all life support from my father who was on a ventilator and feeding tube. Two catholic nurses happened to be present beside my mother when this conversation took place in the Neuro Intensive Care Unit where my father was hospitalized for fourteen months.
It had always bothered me that doctors would suggest such a form of euthanasia.
When the doctors had left my mother who was visibly upset, the two Catholic nurses comforted her and told her that it would be murder if the doctors performed this course of action.
**In that course of 14 months I took it my family responsibility to go to the hospital to visit and pray with my beloved father every day in the evening hours. I remember one night when my father was having a very difficult time in with his phantom limbs and breathing difficulties.
He had his full mental faculty but couldn’t speak because of the tracheal breathing tube.
He motioned me with his head and eyes towards the ventilator. I knew he wanted me to shut the ventilator off. Yet; because I respected the dignity of life, I had to leave the room overwhelmed with great sadness because I felt like a coward for not doing what I myself would have wanted in the same situation. **
You said; It’s certainly a difficult choice for any family to make especially when a loved one is in this terminal situation.
As a result though my family chose to convert our split level home into a mini-hospital with 24/7 nursing care where my father lived another 10 years with the love of his family always at his side.
Such memories are fond in my mind this time of year. My father passed away peacefully on December 20th, 2007. We prayerfully honored his Requiem Mass on (“Christmas Eve”) December 24th that same year.
