The Washington Post:  “Don’t resuscitate this patient; he has a living will,” the nurse told the doctor, Monica Williams-Murphy, handing her a document. Williams-Murphy looked at the sheet bearing the signature of the unconscious 78-year-old man, who had been rushed from a nursing home to the emergency room. “Do everything possible,” it read, with a check approving cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The nurse’s mistake was based on a misguided belief that living wills automatically include “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders. Working quickly, Williams-Murphy revived the patient, who had a urinary tract infection and recovered after a few days in the hospital. Unfortunately, misunderstandings involving documents meant to guide end-of-life decision-making are “surprisingly common,” said Williams-Murphy, medical director of advance-care planning and end-of-life education for Huntsville Hospital Health System in Alabama.”

It's hard to believe that someone would purposely starve a parent in order to collect the inheritance.  I recently read an Estate of Denial article called Slowly Starving Her Mother to Get the Inheritance. Unfortunately, elder abuse cases are not uncommon throughout the country.  Money is a powerful motivator and unfortunately, some people will stoop to the lowest of levels just to collect.

In the article, a woman was making medical decisions on behalf of her aging mother.   The woman, who had suffered from drug and alcohol problems, had very little income.  Her mother, however, had assets worth over $500,000.  When the woman moved in with her mother to act as the mother's caretaker, the woman began starving her mother.  As time went on, the mother became very ill and lost a significant amount of weight.  After a call from a concerned neighbor, Adult Protective Services got involved and insisted that the mother be moved to a care facility.  Finding the cheapest facility she could find, the woman dumped her mother at the facility with no clothes, and instructions to not give her mother any food or let her out of bed because she was dying.  She also instructed the care facility workers that no one was to talk to any of the mother's friends or relatives about her mother.  Unbelievably, the woman was actually trying to slowly kill her mother.

Thankfully, in this case there were people who cared enough to realize what was going on and get the mother some help.   Not surprisingly, mom wasn't dying after all.

How was this woman able to do these horrible things to her mother?  She was named as […]