I had an experience in 2001 that led me to profoundly rethink the effectiveness of some aspects of our medical system here in the United States. I was on-call in house as the anesthesia provider for a military hospital where I worked as an active duty Air Force Nurse Anesthetist. It was a Saturday morning and I had just come on duty for a 24 call shift. I heard an overhead page for "respiratory therapist stat to room 420". I went up to the 4th floor to see what the situation was. The nurse taking care of the woman in room 420 gave me a report about her patient. The woman was a 75 year old who had been admitted with a diagnosis of pneumonia. She had a medical history of CHF, HTN, COPD, NIDDM, and GERD. I went into room 420 where this lady was receiving a nebulized albuterol breathing treatment. She looked frightened and appeared very anxious. Her oxygen saturation on 4L of oxygen via nasal cannula was 90%, her respiratory rate was 30 BPM, she was diaphoretic and her color was ashen. She was using accessory muscles of breathing and her lungs had coarse crackles throughout with consolidation in her left lower lobe. I spoke with her husband while she was having her breathing treatment to learn more about her history. He was a soft spoken, kindly man and I found myself very drawn in by him. He told me that he had been married to his wife for 50 years. He brought her to the emergency department that morning feeling confident that the doctors and nurses would make her better. I stayed and talked to both him and his wife for about 15 minutes and then on making my rounds throughout the hospital before returning to my call room. At 1310 I heard the overhead page for "Code Blue MICU (Medical intensive care unit) bed ten”. I responded to the code and saw that it was the woman from bed 420. I intubated her and managed her airway while the code was in progress. CPR was performed, the woman was defibrillated repeatedly and ACLS medications were given intravenously. The code continued on for what seemed like a very long time. I looked at her pupils and they were fixed and dilated. Residents then decided to insert chest tubes and considered opening her chest. In my mind I thought of the dear man who brought her in and about how much he loved her. It made me so sad to think of him leaving the hospital alone after so many years with her. He was so unaware of what was going on in MICU bed 10 where his wife lay lifeless, naked and bloody. It seemed like a massacre was in progress. I had connected with this woman and her husband and I felt a personal connection to them which overwhelmed me. I asked the team leader to please "call the code” as her pupils were fixed and dilated and any further efforts to resuscitate her would be futile. He did and I left the room. I never saw her husband again but I have thought of him so many times since. Even as I write this I feel my eyes watering. This experience forever changed the way I view our healthcare system. Every day in every hospital in the country codes are called on elderly people with multiple co-morbidities who rarely survive and when they do survive often spend the remainder of their life on life-support. Their dignity is robbed from them and the cost to the system is enormous. This type of aggressive end of life care is a lucrative business. Doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and medical supply companies are making a great deal of money. It's not in their best interest to change the system. Our culture needs to change though and people need to realize and accept that death is a very normal and natural part of life and it can even be embraced. I want to be instrumental in changing this type of attitude about death and dying. I feel such passion about being a change agent for this cause.