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Navigating death while machines keep us alive
In the intensive care unit, the question of when a person is dying is not easy to answer.
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In a photo taken on Jan 11, 2021, a nurse tends to a patient in the intensive care unit at a California hospital.
PHOTO: AFP
Daniela J. Lamas
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(NYTIMES) My patient's wife had just one question: Was her husband dying? She knew that he was still on the ventilator even after all these weeks, his lungs too sick and his body too weak to breathe on his own. That he still needed a continuous dialysis machine to do the work of his kidneys. That he had yet to wake up in any meaningful way, though his brain scans showed nothing amiss. That it had been more than 50 days since he entered the hospital and we needed to talk about what would come next.
But when she stood there at the bedside, her husband looked much the same to her as he had a week ago, much the same as he might look next week if we continued to push forward. And she had to ask: Why did we need to have this conversation today?
