The Ventilator: Life, Death And The Choices We Make At The End

“What if the seemingly rational choices you prefer when you’re healthy no longer make sense to you when you’re actually confronting death?”

This poignant story is told by the husband of a nurse.
Throughout her life this nurse, Stephanie, was adamant in repeatedly telling her family about multiple circumstances she had encountered in the emergency room: “I don’t ever want to live like that.” “Don’t ever let that happen,” she told everyone. They all knew her views.

She was diagnosed with ALS and spent many happy years living after the diagnosis.

Yet, she shocked her husband when she landed in the emergency room to have fluid removed from her lungs and replied “yes” when the respiratory therapist asked if she wanted a ventilator.

“Reason is puny in the face of death.”

Listen or read this story from NPR of the nurse with ALS