Incident in Room 304

One of the less savory aspects of my mother’s dying in September was the feeding tube war. To cut to the chase, I was for it and other loved ones were against it.

“On a feeding tube” is a bit of literary genius. No one who hears the phrase has a positive reaction. It conjures weak-minded people who will not face facts and who refuse to let go. It connotes unconscionable medical expenses (in reality, a feeding tube is cheap and low-tech, as things go) and the sapping of scarce resources. It is thrown into the mix with other bandied causes of contemporary social ills.

But when push came to shove, I had a hard time withdrawing what I considered ordinary care from someone inarguably sick but breathing on her own. The doctor corrected me, saying the U.S. Supreme Court has declared a feeding tube not “ordinary care.” I responded that the Supreme Court gave us Dred Scott v. Sandford and Roe v. Wade.

We were united over DNR and DNI: where the heart or breathing has stopped, take no measures to revive. Some in my family saw not a dime’s worth of difference between a breathing tube and a feeding tube and thought I was being selfish, religiously fundamentalist, and disgustingly casuistic, although they didn’t say it so nicely. When I suggested that starvation might be painful, the doctor assured me it doesn’t hurt much after a few days. Nice. When I let drop the word “euthanasia,” he said it wasn’t euthanasia because euthanasia is against the law in this country. (You may ponder that circularity yourself.)

A paper copy of the pre-expressed wishes of my mother was supposed to settle the matter. No such document was extant, but none was needed. My mother had often solemnly impressed on me her disdain for “heroic measures.” Unfortunately, we had never got around to the part of the discussion unpacking whether feeding her was a heroic measure. Weighing in again, the doc said that if her stroke had happened a few hundred years ago my mother would be dead already. I replied that it wasn’t a few hundred years ago, it was now. God says, “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it” (Proverbs 3:27). In A.D. 1420 it may not have been in our power to prevent starvation, but in 2014 it is.

Moreover, even if my mother had it in black and white, with a barrister’s signature upon it, that she should be “starved by withholding of nutrients until such time as she shall expire,” does one honor every wish of a person, even if it is sinful? I am not saying the wish is sinful; for now all I am saying is that I am stuck on the philosophical meat hook of the rightness of acquiescing to any and every statement of a person’s desire for the treatment of her own body. I thought the whole crux of pro-life versus pro-choice was this very issue of a woman’s absolute sovereignty and authority over her body. I thought we decided “No” on that. “You are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19).

“Persistent vegetative state” and “poor quality of life” were terms suggested for my consideration. I thought to myself, “Who made you gods?” and remembered Terri Schiavo.

When my husband was 10, he got a BB gun for his birthday and went into the woods behind his house to try it out. He spotted a rabbit and pulled the trigger before he could think. When he walked over to observe his handiwork, its little heart was beating fast, and one eye was looking up at him. Not able to bear the sight of it, my husband aimed, turned his head, and fired again. No one likes to watch prolonged suffering.

In the end, the debate was moot. The day after my order to feed, my mother began drowning in her own secretions, and my father and I reversed our decision, allowing the removal of sustenance. She was gone in two days. One relative said I had waffled and merely come late to reason. Me, I was just listening for the Holy Spirit to say when.

Email aseupeterson@wng.org