Theme: Pain

Extubating my son: “My heart wanted a few more years but he was so tired and I had to accept that. I didn’t want him to suffer anymore.”

The mom of a boy born very prematurely, who lived with serious medical complexities for 14 years, speaks so tenderly about how she had to really listen and watch to understand her son’s wishes for himself which meant his end of life. “I was like, okay, yeah, he’s done with this. And we’re done with this. You get to that point where it’s like, I’m not going to allow him to suffer any more than he has to. Because as much as I wanted him to stay there on life support that wasn’t what he wanted. … We will never be ready.”