The View From Your Sick Bed

by Patrick Appel

A reader writes:

My mother died on March 4, 2009.

I was right there with her, holding her hand. Because she had an Advance Health Care Directive, she died in her bedroom, with a few family members kissing her and telling her how much we love her. 

It sickens me (sorry about the unintended pun, but I don't have a better word) that many moms and dads will die in hospitals hooked up to machines, drawing out the intolerable and the inevitable, because Advance Health Care Directives have turned into Death Panels. I want to die--when it's my time--just like Mimi did. It's pitiful that so many will be deprived of understanding this option because of Sarah Palin.