Marie Cooper led her life according to her Christian faith. She baked pies for her neighbors in northern West Virginia, and said grace before even a bite of food. She watched Jimmy Swaggart, a televangelist preacher — a little too loudly, in her daughter Sherry Uphold’s opinion. And she always said that at the end of her life, she did not want to be resuscitated.
“My mother’s religious belief is when it is her time to go, that’s God’s choosing, not hers,” Ms. Uphold said. “She was very adamant about that.”
Last winter, doctors found cancer cells in her stomach. She’d had “do not resuscitate” and “do not intubate” orders on file for decades and had just filled out new copies, instructing medical staff to withhold measures to restart her heart if it stopped, and to never give her a breathing tube.
In February, Ms. Cooper walked into the hospital for a routine stomach scope to determine the severity of the cancer. After the procedure, Ms. Uphold visited her mother in the recovery room and saw her in a panic. Despite having an oxygen tube in her nose, Ms. Cooper was gesturing as if she could not breathe. She was able to force out just one word at a time.
Ms. Uphold called for help and was ushered to a waiting room while the medical team called an emergency code. Ms. Cooper grew even more distressed and “uncooperative,” according to medical records. Doctors restrained her and inserted a breathing tube down her throat, violating the wishes outlined in her medical chart.
Ms. Uphold, livid, confronted the doctors, who could not explain why Ms. Cooper had been intubated. When Ms. Cooper awoke, she tried to pull at the tubes and IV lines protruding from her body. She motioned to her daughter and the doctors that she desperately wanted her breathing tube removed. “They had me tied down,” Ms. Cooper said. “I was scared to death.” Ms. Uphold found herself in a situation she and her mother had always wanted to avoid.