Or if John wants to try further therapy, then we can try to tweak this regimen that you've received.

The chemo that he had prior to the stem cell transplant, even though he lived, he survived, he hasn't walked since.So things to think about would be, you know, to go home with a lot of support, with home hospice, would be a possibility, or not. I'll go look at the CAT scan and then we'll speak with the neurologist.One thing that makes our patients different from other patient populations is by the time that we transplant them first time, second time, they've been through so much that at that point, stopping therapy is not even within the mindset of the majority of our patients.

When the moment comes, and you're confronted with the prospect of "pulling the plug," do you know how you'll respond? You know, so we have different feelings on that. And yet for almost everybody involved, it feels much more difficult to stop something that's already been started.— Respiration 18.

"FRONTLINE also meets Marthe Laureville, who is 85 years old and has dementia. Good! I always say there is something to do. But with those advances and all of that progress comes an ultimate tradeoff.

I don't want him to die. But it feels like, when you have the technology available, that your decisions to use or not use it are like the decisions to allow life or not allow life. And by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. But I think you can have a lot of conversations about these things, but I think when the moments come, I don't think that anybody can be completely prepared for what it's really all about.The uncertainty is the most disturbing part of the decision-making. And this one will be successful and I can get back to my normal life. Major funding is provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. Then join the discussion at PBS.org.FRONTLINE is made possible by contributions to your PBS station from viewers like you. ""It's hard to watch. We give a little bit of a dose of the sedative to make sure she feels no pain.We have a tremendous amount of technology that prolong life. They have these diseases that are life-shortening.Now, if you look at the history of critical care, the idea of an intensive care unit was for you to come there with a life-threatening illness and respond to the treatment and get better.

That's — that's my goal.Sometimes there are patients for whom I think about them and I wish we'd stopped earlier because I think they suffered unnecessarily, but in the moment, in the heat of that moment, maybe I didn't realize it at that time. So that's a struggle we have all the time, you know, trying to weigh the potential risk of death from the procedure and the risk of death from the disease.Hopefully, we'll find another donor and I can go through another transplant. She has been intubated for two weeks, and now her daughters, Nadege, a nurse, and Sherley, a physician, have to decide whether to keep her on a ventilator. In Facing Death, FRONTLINE gains extraordinary access to The Mount Sinai Medical Center, one of New York's biggest hospitals, to take a closer measure of today's complicated end-of-life decisions. But I'm not sure it will really help.Were you here during the night? "I can't humanly say that to a patient. He's like, 150 pounds now," says his wife, Debbie Moloney. In Facing Death, FRONTLINE gains extraordinary access to The Mount Sinai Medical Center, one of New York's biggest hospitals, to take a closer measure of … We'd like you to breathe, OK?On the other hand, we're dealing with diseases which will otherwise be fatal. "I myself would not want to put Mom through a trach[eotomy]. You know, I think everything went downhill from that. But ultimately, we can't overcome the patient's illness in most cases. Heart rate 104. I can't see you be any more debilitated.' Can you just open your eyes up a little bit for me and look all the way up?You know, I had many conversations with Norman myself about his prognosis and what would happen and what he wanted. The bigger problem I think right now is his lungs. I had to." From the standpoint of his brain, it's unclear whether he's had long-term damage from the cardiac arrest, but it does appear that he's waking up.

And the availability of the therapies has created this fiction that we can orchestrate this one way or the other, when the truth of it is that, for all of this magnificent technology, the underlying illness and the medical condition of the patient are far and away the most important factors in determining the outcome. — Bent my head back and pushed it down my throat. He has tried every available treatment, including two bone marrow transplants. This documentary takes a closer look at today's complicated end-of-life decisions.

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Now he wants to continue chemotherapy, even though the chance of its working is minuscule. FRONTLINE reports from Iraq on the miscalculations and mistakes behind the brutal rise of ISIS. But I offer.

Unfortunately, what has happened is that Americans are now coming to ICUs to die.In a perfect world, the patient designates a health care proxy and has a discussion about what their preferences would be at the end of life.

I never said that to any patient, never," Dr. Celia Grosskreutz of Mount Sinai's Bone Marrow Transplant Unit tells FRONTLINE.