by Joanne Faryon – KPBS Morning Edition

This page of video and audio gives you a glimpse of what it is like in California subacute units.
One video talks with the wife a man who lived in nursing home for 10 years in a vegetative state before dying. It covers subjects such as a Do Not Resuscitate order that was never signed.

Another man talks about his wife who suffered a brain injury and “lived” at Villa Coronado for past four years. He recalls a time when the despair of his situation drove him to the brink.

A doctor describes what it means for a patient to have a tracheostomy.

One week on life support can cost more than an entire year of health care for the average person enrolled in Medi-Cal.

View “An Impossible Choice”

View follow up article by the same journalist, Joanne Faryon, “Deciding When a Life is No Longer Worth Living”