During the last two months of life, Dorothy Glas endured so many blood tests her thin arms turned black and blue. The 85-year-old woman submitted to probes of her abdomen. Radiologists scanned her brain, kidneys, thyroid and heart. A psychiatrist screened her for depression.

"My mother told him, 'Of course I'm depressed! I'm dying. How can you be happy?'" said her daughter, Meredith Snedeker of Hamilton Square.

Glas withered to 80 pounds from an intestinal infection and, after a fall, entered the hospital in July for the final time, complaining of dizziness and a cut foot. The medicine revved up and doctors at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital Hamilton ordered a flurry of tests: X-rays, CT scans, echocardiograms and scopes of her digestive tract.

Kidney specialists examined her. So did gastroenterologists, infectious disease specialists, neurologists, internists and a cardiologist, according to a 22-page Medicare summary. Her daughter said she felt helpless as the tests and consultations snowballed. Glas, a former nurse suffering from several serious chronic ailments, including heart disease, slowly sank into the kind of high-tech death she always feared, even though a living will spelled out her wishes and she spoke up to oppose many of the tests.

"Blood gasses. EEGs. EKGs. The closer she got to death the more tests they did," the daughter said. Then, after an apparent stroke, the elderly woman stopped eating and a physician suggested that what Dorothy Glas really needed was a feeding tube.

"I was in disbelief," Snedeker said.

Dying in New Jersey is unlike dying anywhere else in the country -- it is hard and expensive. The sick and elderly get more tests, see more doctors and endure more procedures than patients in any other state. "

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