This case had changed the way Rider looked at the world more than almost anything in her life besides her children. It had led her to set out her own end-of-life preferences very clearly in an advance directive: for example, that she should be removed from life support only if two doctors and a sister she had designated as her health-care proxy agreed; that she would want pain medicines, yes, but no more than necessary for pain, and not in an amount that would carry a great risk of killing her. Members of the public deserved to know the story, so that they, too, could use its lessons to make
...more
