No, the living will didn't enter into it at all
Instead I had to go digging for a doctor with balls and ask him to integrate the picture for Dad's wife.
The key issue seemed to be a plethora of specialists - each one would pop in every day or so and tweak his own little area - adjust this to lower blood pressure, add more of that to improve circulation, some of this to reduce bleeding, etc.... Every guy, when asked, would mumble about how his latest little tweak improved his little symptom.
The problem was every tweak for one system hosed some other guy's tweak. Basically dad died of multiple system failure brought on by complications from radiation therapy to treat multiple myeloma.
I finally called in a separate oncologist and asked him to integrate the picture and provide the overview prognosis. Dad's primary oncologist had lost his own dad to multiple myeloma and didn't have the stones to come out and say it was game over. He just could not say it.
I have to say the guy I found was awesome, he called a bedside meeting (dad was unconscious and on a ventilator - already pretty much gone I think), explained that at this point what we had was technology run amok, and then point by point crushed all of his wife's false hopes with facts. Tough job but ultimately effective.
An hour later they shot him with extra morphine and discontinued the meds that were keeping him going. With the blood pressure regulating meds gone he didn't last 30 more minutes.
