Preparing for Life's Final Hours

Melinda Beck, in today’s Wall Street Journal, has a good summary of ‘advanced directives’ – those documents that give direction to family and medical professionals who “may have to decide whether you would want to be kept alive artificially, what level of disability you’d be willing to live with and how to let you die if you had no hope of recovery.”

Advanced Directives are at the heart of the ‘death panel’ controversy in some of the health care proposals Congress is considering. We talked about this in an earlier article.

Here are highlights from Melinda’s article.

While most people don’t want life-sustaining care if they were in an irreversible coma, others want to be kept alive at all costs and some religions require it.

You can use advanced directives to require interventions – not just prevent them.

Advanced directives come in two varieties: living wills that set out what kind of life support you want in different situations and durable powers of attorney or health care proxies that appoint someone to make health-care decisions for you. Every state has its own form and they are available online.

Although you don’t need to file advanced directives, your regular doctors and your family should have copies. Some states let you store them electronically. Google Health has started an electronic registry. Make sure doctors and family know how to get to your documents.

The best time to consider an advanced directive is long before you need it. Aging with Dignity has a booklet and DVD that can help you have the conversation with loved ones. You may also want to check out a new book, Peaceful Transitions: An Ironclad Strategy to Die When and How YOU Want. There is also software that can help you create a living will.

Final Thoughts

As difficult as it may be to decide now, it is much more difficult to make them in the heat of a medical crisis when emotions are raw.

Related articles from WalterBristow.com:

1. Will Health Care Reform Require That Older Americans Decide How to Die?
2. Tracing Your Roots with the Social Security Death Index
3. Worldwide Study: Religious People Are Healthier
4. The Real Reason Successful People Buy Life Insurance
5. Are You Drowning in the Information Glut of the Internet Ocean? Here’s a Life Preserver.