Prince knew different. She smiled at him. He saw the gleam in her eye.
On May 14, the breathing tube in her throat got clogged and fell out during suctioning at a nursing home. She went without oxygen for 10 minutes and suffered brain damage. Even Prince could see her stare was blank. Still, he continued life support.
He believes in God and in miracles. He's a Philadelphia fireman who races into burning buildings. There's always hope.
Ten times between June 2009 and July 2010, Maria Pulido went by ambulance from a nursing home for ventilator-dependent patients to Abington's intensive care unit, where she spent 69 days and accumulated charges of $1.2 million.
What, if anything, should America do when families insist on continuing life support even though doctors and nurses believe it just prolongs dying?
And why, finally, on July 14, did Prince Pulido decide to let his mother die?
Path of aggressive medicine
About 2.4 million Americans die every year, an estimated 400,000 in an intensive care unit.
Most Americans don't want an ICU death, but many start down a path of aggressive medicine that takes them there. Some doctors say they themselves are partly to blame. They need to do a better job early on telling patients with chronic illnesses the risks and grim realities that likely lie ahead.
But doctors get paid to treat, to do procedures. And they don't get reimbursed to have difficult and time-consuming conversations, to deal with family members who want explanations or have objections. It's easier for doctors to say, "Go for it."
Increasingly, patients who start down that aggressive road are deciding - when hope is gone - to surrender, to focus on comfort at the very end, doctors say. Palliative care teams, meeting with families, have helped that happen.
