sad situation

About a month ago, my wife's cousin (40 year old male) evidently fell while shoveling snow and hurt his leg. There was no obvious wound but those around him said he complained of a lot of pain. Within a couple of days, he was lapsing into a coma and was diagnosed with a severe septicemia, an infection coursing through his bloodstream. He was flown to Seattle to the university hospital where extraordinary measures have been taken to try to save his life. The infection was eventually diagnosed as a methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, one of so called superbugs that is resistant to most available antibiotics. At various times his blood pressure dropped to almost non-existence, he has had severe liver damage, one cardiac arrest, and eventually it's progressed to the point he has significant brain damage. A week ago it was made clear he will not come out of the coma and will not survive. The only measures being taken now are to make sure there is no pain, although it's doubtful he can feel any.

Now it's just the waiting left. It's hard on the family because there is no closure. Once hope is gone, waiting for the inevitable can be difficult; it's sad, emotionally and mentally draining. One of the major decisions the family had to make was when to stop efforts that all of the attending physicians came to regard as futile. It makes us all think about the value of life, but also how fragile it can be. It also makes me think about what I would want done (and not done) if this were me. My wife and I know we need to prepare living wills that spells out how far we want medical procedures to be taken if something like this were to happen to one of us. Having those kind of instructions available can only make a potentially very gut-wrenching decision easier to make.