Word: cruzans
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...Supreme Court takes up the case of Nancy Cruzan and considers for the first time whether a family may stop the artificial sustenance of a helplessly ill and totally unaware patient...
...nightmare began nearly seven years ago. In the early-morning hours of Jan. 11, 1983, Nancy Cruzan's car swerved on an icy and deserted Missouri country road. The car flipped and crashed. The 25-year-old woman tumbled out and landed facedown in a ditch. Medical help arrived promptly enough to save her life but not fast enough to save her oxygen-deprived brain...
...Nancy Cruzan never regained consciousness after that accident, and doctors say she never will. Now 32, she lies in a condition known as a persistent vegetative state, awake but totally unaware, at the Missouri Rehabilitation Center at Mount Vernon. Her body is stiff and severely contracted, her knees and arms drawn into a fetal position, her fingers dug into her wrists. Some nurses report that Cruzan can turn toward persons who speak to her and that she has cried on several occasions, once when a valentine card was read to her. But doctors say she is oblivious to the environment...
...tube to Cruzan's stomach provides all the food and water that keep her on this side of existence. The cost of her care, $130,000 annually, is borne by the state (since she is not a minor, her parents are not held responsible for her debts). Doctors say her heart could beat and her lungs could breathe for 30 more years, but her parents want the feeding stopped so that she can die in peace...
This week the family will direct its plea to the U.S. Supreme Court, and for the first time draw the nation's highest court into the murky legal and ethical seas that surround the notion of a right to die. What the Justices decide will directly affect Cruzan. It will also set some legal boundaries for addressing the plight of the 10,000 other people in the U.S. lingering in a persistent vegetative state. Ultimately, the ruling could have an impact on the 7 out of 10 Americans who can someday expect to confront questions of life-sustaining medical care...