In a Crisis, Do-Not-Revive Requests Don’t Always Work

December 21, 2006

After watching her husband and two daughters die painfully from cancer, Madeline Neumann decided she did not want to prolong her own death. When she moved into a nursing home in Florida at age 89, she signed an advance directive that instructed doctors not to revive her if she collapsed. Despite those written instructions, emergency medics were summoned one evening in 1995 when aides found her unresponsive. (USA Today)