After her father suffered a debilitating stroke, the journalist Katy Butler became his caretaker. Doctors gave him a pacemaker and other medical devices meant to keep him alive, but past a certain point, they were only sustaining his suffering. At the end of life as he wanted to live it, his doctor’s refused to turn off the gadgets and let him die “naturally.” Butler joins us Wednesday to share her family’s struggle and to talk about what it means to die a “good death” today. [Rebroadcast]
Katy Butler is a journalist whose writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine. Her first book is called Knocking On Heaven's Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death[Amazon|Indiebound].