November 14, 2007
The Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan
Part 3: From Joyce Cruzan’s Perspective
I never thought the day would come that I would want a child of mine to die instead of live. Nancy is in a place of no return and I pray to God everyday that he would allow her to die and stop her suffering. It is so difficult to look at her and only see a shell of a human being that use to be my daughter. I only wish that the government and the rehab hospital would mind their own business and let this situation be handled by our family. Everyday I sit at home in the kitchen waiting for Joe to call when he got off of work. He wanted to know about any news on the case and to check what came in the mail. It was the highlight of our day and the most disappointing part of our day. Everyday when Joe came home from work he would take the mail into the basement to read and …show more content…
It troubled him that the Judge Teel described Nancy’s condition as “unresponsive and hopeless” with “no cognitive purpose for her except sound and perhaps pain.” If Nancy feels pain then she is not in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). We did not know what was going on behind the scenes, but later it would all come to light. Our case bypassed the appellate court of Missouri and headed straight to the Missouri Supreme Court, with a little assistance. Our case was scheduled for review in September, along with a case that has opposite opinions as ours. In other words, the parents of a young man named Phillip Radar, that was diagnosed as being brain dead, did not want to let their child go, but the hospital caring for him did. Phillip’s heart was beating even though he was brain dead. Both of the cases were scheduled to be heard on the same morning in September, but on August 31st Phillip’s heart stopped and the effort to revive him was unsuccessful. His death left our case as the only one to be