Doctors, nurses, friends, and family are all at each other's throats about whether to keep her alive. She'd even filled out an Advance Directive to avoid just such a horror show. Somehow, they never make things clear. I'm terminal, in permanent coma, if it will only delay death, or if the burden outweighs the benefit. But we're all terminal.
Medical care can only delay death.
At the end of a day of doing your very best, you go home feeling wounded and powerless. Our first thoughts of mortality usually begin with an illness. It's likely death will find us in a hospital. With few exceptions, it will feel like a defeat of everything we'd hoped to achieve. Years of clinical work and ethics consultation have convinced me that we make such a mess of the end of life because we focus on procedures rather than on goals and needs .