Patients dying fast, and far from family, challenge practice of palliative care

Seattle mourned the news: Elizabeth and Robert Mar died of COVID within a day of each other. They would have celebrated 50 years of marriage in August. But their deaths at the end of March were not the same. Liz, a vivacious matriarch at 72, died after two weeks sedated on a ventilator. Her analytical engineer husband, Robert, 78, chose no aggressive measures. He was able to communicate with their adult children until nearly the end.