Life and Death: Stories of a Heart Transplant Patient

Louis J. Sirico, 1567

Abstract

This article argues that members of the legal profession and other lawmakers cannot fully understand end-of-life directives without experiencing death and dying first-hand. The author provides several short stories about his experiences with a defective heart, cardiac arrest, and subsequent heart transplant to warn readers not to treat end-of-life directives as conclusive statements of a patient's wishes.