I’ve been back in L.A. for a couple days now. Thanks again to everyone who had a good thought for my family and me. My mother surprised all the doctors and is on the road to recovery – she’s a pretty tough cookie. It was good to be in Atlanta with her during her ordeal, and it’s also nice to be back home.

One thing that struck me while I was visiting in the hospital – something everyone knows – is how good modern medicine has become at keeping people alive, and the dilemma it can make for the family. I’m grateful that my Mom recovered, but if she hadn’t, then at some point someone would have had to make the decision to pull the plug, and since my parents are divorced, unfortunately that someone would have been me and my brother.

It’s amazing that they can put a tube down someone’s throat and take over their breathing for them, but seeing someone on a ventilator is pretty gruesome. They keep you sedated while on it, so that you won’t “fight” against the tube, but they can’t keep a person sedated for long periods without medical consequences. So every few days they bring the sedation up and the person starts to become aware of their discomfort, sometimes feeling that they’re choking and not getting enough air, even though they are. It can be uncomfortable at best and hellish at worst.

Seeing this first hand I got to thinking what would I want if I ever got really sick. I think if I were still relatively young and caught something like, say, a really virulent flu bug, and had to be on a vent for a few days with a good chance that I’d recover and be back to normal – in that case, I’d probably want to go through with it. But if I were old and getting to the end, I’m not sure I’d want to experience the fear and discomfort of it. I’ll definitely have to look into making a living will or getting something in writing. Modern medicine is really amazing but it’s gotten so good that it can be a blessing and a curse.

Not that anyone’s asking my advice, but if you have family, I’d definitely talk to them about this stuff and about what they would want if they ended up on life support. Would they want to be on a ventilator or have their heart re-started if it were to stop? This incident with my mother happened so quickly that it took all of us by surprise and we were all sitting there wondering if she would really want to be going through this or not. Thankfully it worked out well for everyone involved, but it could have been much more wrenching than it was.