All this week, The Takeaway is talking to some of the 66 million caregivers in America who work day and night to care for someone they love, a process that can sometimes be overwhelming.
But for Peggy Battin, overwhelming doesn’t begin to describe the change her life took two years ago when her husband Brooke Hopkins was struck by cyclist, thrown from his bike onto his head, and nearly died. That was back in November 2008–today Brooke is a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the neck down.
For Peggy, the experience hasn’t just forever altered her role as a caregiver, but also as an academic and a thought leader.
Peggy Battin is a distinguished professor of philosophy at the University of Utah, and she has spent the greater part of her life advocating for patients’ rights to end their lives. But when that was a request her husband made following his accident, it caused Peggy to re-evaluate how she views end of life issues and how the pieces of machinery that help to keep her husband alive can just as easily be turned off.
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