(NYT) – Some consider the regular feeding of late-stage dementia patients to be nonnegotiable. Others see it as extending life unnecessarily.

Within a few years of that, Ms. Lawson could utter only a string of unintelligible sounds and had lost the ability to feed herself.

To keep her alive, her care team fed her three times a day. Nurses held her head up and spooned meals into her mouth — eggs and sausages, chicken and vegetables — sometimes waking her to do so. They were providing the very care Ms. Lawson had administered decades earlier and hoped never to receive.

At times, she bowed her head and pushed herself away from the table. Her husband, Stan Lawson, and Ms. Hendrickson took these signs to mean she did not want to eat. It was painful for the family to watch her slowly deteriorate, and they didn’t like seeing her force-fed. (Read More)