One of my New Year's resolutions (okay it's August now, so?) is to get a living will/advanced healthcare directive written and witnessed, etc. I picked up the paperwork at a local hospital yesterday. You can download the form for your state for free here.
Wednesday, August 22
Because I'd rather Bill Frist made
NO decisions for me. At all. Ever.
One of my New Year's resolutions (okay it's August now, so?) is to get a living will/advanced healthcare directive written and witnessed, etc. I picked up the paperwork at a local hospital yesterday. You can download the form for your state for free here.
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thanks, i too never got round tuit.
ReplyDeletei will now. : )
Excellent advice and link.
ReplyDeleteIt's a good idea to have that in place, because without it, you're making other people (probably, people who love you) GUESS WHAT YOU'D WANT without knowing your input.
A loving, caring friend/mother/spouse doesn't do that to the people she loves and cares about.
(Daniel & I got ours done following a book by Suze Orman about finance. Believe it or not, THAT was the first piece of advice in the book. If you respect your finances, if you respect your energy, get it done.)
One of my New Year's resolutions is to actually have enough of an estate to need a will. I'm not overly worried about advanced healthcare directives. I am pretty sure that the present healthcare situation will insure that I die quickly and painfully at the hands of whatever murderous doctor misdiagnoses and treats my tennis elbow or ingrown toenail.
ReplyDeleteDr. Bill demonstrating his diagnostic acumen on the Senate Floor.....
ReplyDeleteSenate Majority Leader Frist believed that Terri Schiavo, a brain-damaged woman whose husband wanted to remove her gastric feeding tube, should not have been diagnosed as in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). In a lengthy speech delivered on the Senate Floor, Frist challenged the diagnosis of Schiavo’s physicians: "I question it based on a review of the video footage which I spent an hour or so looking at last night in my office." The Washington Post reported that Frist was criticized by a medical ethicist at Northwestern University for making a diagnosis without personally examining the patient and for questioning the diagnosis when he was not a neurologist.
After her death, the autopsy showed signs of long-term and irreversible damage to a brain consistent with PVS.
Frist defended his actions after the autopsy. Because of his speech and his status as a licensed physician, various complaints against Frist were filed with medical oversight organizations, but those organizations lacked jurisdiction to take any action.
To his credit, he did judge to be heinous and dishonest his illicit acquistion of cats from animal shelters for vivisection during Med School; pretending to adopt them as pets.
After my parents died without wills (or durable powers of attorney for healthcare), not only did I get all the legal mumbo-jumbo set up for myself, but I made my siblings, Seven, Eight, and NineGrain each do theirs.
ReplyDeleteJust do it, folks, you will sleep better. It is cheap, fast, and you will know that your are not pitting family members against one another should something happen to you. You've taken all the guesswork out of the situation.
Regards,
Tengrain