Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-ravaged Hospital

by Sheri Fink

The hospital opened its doors to serve its stated, three-pronged mission: the alleviation of pain, the prolongation of life, and the relief of suffering.

In fact the distinction between murder and medical care often came down to the intent of the person administering the drug.

The difference between something ethical and something illegal was, as Cook would put it, “so fine as to be imperceivable.”

We live, Pou would later remember thinking, in the greatest country in the world and yet the sick could basically be abandoned like this. As she, too, awaited rescue, she felt sad, frustrated, and helpless.

People often did not want to talk about death with the dying, or be there with a relative when it happened. Why did we celebrate every milestone in life except this one?

But what she did not like about her job was the way she and her colleagues, with their drugs and machines, forced some suffering people to be alive for many months. People who chose ICU care did not realize this could happen, she believed. Death was not always the enemy, she felt, especially when somebody was elderly. She thought that most of her patients did not want the high-tech care that their families wanted for them. The effect of ICU treatment on quality of life should be considered.

“We’re so frightened of ‘euthanasia,’ ” she would say. “It’s the race card of medicine. It’s like the word ‘lynching.’ ” She wanted that to change.