Flashback: ATWT's Casey Unplugged
from SOW

Watching Ed pull the plug on Eve's life-support system three weeks ago on Guiding Light brought to mind another powerful right-to-die storyline. This week in 1990, As The World Turns' Margo pulled the plug on Casey Peretti's respirator, after he had pleaded with her to allow him to die with dignity. (Casey, who was battling Guillain-Barre syndrome, developed encephalitis, an inflammation of the brain, which shut down his body's ability to function.)

The ramifications of this were devastating, particularly because Casey was married to Margo's mother, Lyla. He didn't ask Lyla to help him die because he thought it would be too difficult for her to do so. Consequently, Lyla was devastated when she found out what Margo had done, and accused her of playing God. Casey's strict Catholic parents, Joe and Maureen, took the same stance; Maureen even called Margo a murderer.

"There were multiple conflicts," says Ellen Dolan (Margo). "I mean, not only to lose your husband, but then to find out that he was allowed to die. Then there was the conflict between the doctor (John) and daughter, or father/doctor/daughter and then with the husband (Tom)." Also there was the conflict within Margo, of "Who am I to be making this all?"

Margo was brought up on legal charges for what she had done, and had to face the grand jury. The case didn't look good for her because when she pulled the plug Casey's living will hadn't yet been completed, so there was no tangible proof that he didn't want his life to be sustained on a respirator. (To make things even more complicated, Margo found out during all this that she was pregnant) However, Casey's parents came across a tape Casey had made for Kate (his and Lyla's daughter). They threw it into the garbage without first listening to it, because they felt it would be too difficult for Lyla to hear, but then Duke Kramer retrieved it -- and on it was the evidence needed to exonerate Margo. Apparently, when Casey was making the tape for Kate, Margo came into his room, and he didn't shut off the recorder. That's when he asked her to turn off his respirator should he be put on life support.

Dolan recalls that that scene -- when Margo pulled the plug -- was scary to do, and that she "was shaking throughout it." Does she believe in what Margo did? Yes. "You know, it falls into the same category of the right to your own choice. Yet it's one of those things you'll never know until you're there. Someone lingering, it's just grueling, for them and for their loved ones. I mean, there's no dignity in that. So from that aspect, I totally believe in it. But again I've never been in the actual situation of having to take someone off support, so I don't know what I would do."

Photo caption: Margo granted Casey's last wish by taking him off the life-support system. He couldn't ask his wife Lyla to do it.

Link to Photo: Lyla & Casey

-Mark McGarry