Life...or death?

Your link for the day, that hits a little too close to home.

The link is from CNN, and it links to an article about where the line is when it no longer seems feasible to keep a terminally sick person alive.

The 'too close part' is this: my brother-in-law's (Adam) wife's (LauraLee) mother was in a car accident on Friday , 27 July 07, at 2600 South and Highway 89 in Woods Cross. The power was out, and someone ran the 4-way stop. She was Life-flighted to the U (University of Utah), where her family was told that she was brain-dead.

Now, I don't know what her exact condition right now is, but I wouldn't want to be left 'alive' if I knew I would never regain any semblance of my normal life. Nor would I want to be strung along while my family waited for a miracle to return me to normal (or, for me, what passes as normal).

To quote the article "Recent research into the brain seems to be making it more difficult to say when a terminal patient is actually dead. It turns out that patients considered brain-dead may have a minimal consciousness left and therefore still be technically alive.

"The research seems to suggest that it's very difficult to distinguish the minimally conscious from the permanently unconscious," said Georgetown bioethics professor Robert Veatch."

Where does life end and death begin? Who is ultimately responsible for making the life-altering decisions for me when I can't make them?

If anything, this week has made me realize the importance of having a living will made up, as we never know when we're gonna kick the bucket.