07/17/2026
Heavy post, but one of the most important things you can do as a parent is set your affairs in order for your family, in the event of a tragedy. I learned firsthand when my dad was diagnosed with ALS that it is essential to create a living will and list a power of attorney while you are healthy and able to do so. Letting your family know your wishes ahead of time can help prevent so much confusion and heartbreak down the line. Have the tough conversations now regarding how you want to be treated and who you want making decisions on your behalf if you are incapacitated.
Equally important is naming caregivers for your children if both parents are gone. The court system can take months or longer to settle affairs if a will does not explicitly name a guardian. We never want to think or imagine the worst happening, but it does, and this is another way we can love and protect our kids.
A New York dentist wrote down exactly what he wanted: if he could no longer recognize his own family, comfort care only, no IV fluids, no antibiotics. Five years later that day came, his wife handed the hospital his paperwork, and a doctor gave him everything anyway. The antibiotics kept him alive one more month. His family had to watch.
He was diagnosed with early-onset dementia in his fifties in 2011 and drafted his directive immediately, while he still could. When he fell in his long-term care facility and did not recognize his wife or his two grown sons, they rushed him to the hospital. His wife, who held his healthcare power of attorney, handed the emergency room his advance directive and his POLST, the medical order for life-sustaining treatment. It said comfort care only. Nothing else.
The doctor knew all of it. Antibiotics for the infection. A CT scan. IV fluids. Everything he had said he did not want. His wife and children had to stand in the room and witness the suffering. So they sued.
For years, cases like this were thrown out of court. Doctors, hospitals, and facilities had a kind of blanket immunity. They kept somebody alive, so how could that be wrong? Lawyers would not touch these cases.
Then a case in Georgia broke it open. A grandmother said she never wanted to be intubated or put on any form of life support. She told her friends, her doctors, everyone. Her granddaughter, in her twenties, was her surrogate and knew exactly what she wanted. They intubated the grandmother anyway and put her on a ventilator. The granddaughter sued, the appeals dragged on for years, and the courts in Georgia ultimately sided with her: a patient has the right to refuse treatment, even lifesaving treatment. The case settled for a million dollars, one of the first huge settlements of its kind, and the floodgates opened. The lawyer said they wanted to shout it from the rooftops, because the hospital was wrong.
And then there was the part almost no one talks about. The granddaughter was the one who had to take her grandmother off life support. She had to be in the room and say, wean her from the ventilator. Something her grandmother never wanted, done by the person who loved her most. She will never forget it. It affected her whole life.
Why does this keep happening? Sometimes it is a communication failure. Someone new arrives in the ER and no one asks the one question that matters: what is the code status. Sometimes the paperwork is inaccessible in the emergency. And sometimes, patient advocate Althea Halchuck, EJD, who fields these calls from families, will tell you plainly, it is ego. The doctors are trained to keep people alive. They are not trained to let them die.
This is not a red-state problem or a blue-state problem. These cases are happening all over the country, in every region, across every political line. And there is now a name for it: wrongful prolongation of life.
Only about 30 percent of people in the United States have an advance directive. If you do nothing else, choose your surrogate carefully. Not just your husband because he is the next closest person, but someone who will actually go to bat for you and fight for what you want. And hospice, she says, is meant for six months. The average patient gets 17 days.
How can you not feel for a wife who told them not to do anything, and they did everything? It is heartbreaking.
"The doctors are trained to keep people alive. They're not trained to let them die."
Listen to the full conversation on The Podcast by KevinMD. Link in the comments.
