Advance heath care planning means do it now

A former co-worker was walking out of the bank when struck by a bicyclist. She hit her head on the sidewalk. Hard. She spent the next two weeks in a drug-induced coma, was mostly unconscious and hospitalized for several months and then stayed the better part of the next year in a rehabilitation facility.

A decade later, she’s alive but severely disabled. Although she enjoys watching her grandchildren, she often talks about the need for everyone to have an advance directive for heath care.

She says that most of us are oblivious to the ramifications of a catastrophic accident or illness. And she’s right.

Are you one of the 70 percent of Americans without a living will? Have you thought about what you would want to have happen if you suddenly couldn’t make decisions for yourself? Think about it.

And while you’re thinking about it, Google “advance directives” or go to www.caringinfo.org for information about advance care planning. There you can actually download the proper forms and the instructions are succinct and easily understood.

You may choose to talk to a legal professional and/or your healthcare provider and certainly you should talk to your family.

Your decisions will include what are referred to as the five wishes:

n Who you want to make health care decisions for you when you can’t make them.

n What kind of medical treatment you want or don’t want.

n How comfortable you want to be.

n How you want people to treat you.

n What you want your loved ones to know.

Remember the divisive case regarding Terri Schiavo? This woman’s husband and parents tangled in a moral, ethical and legal battle for 15 years regarding whether or not to pull feeding tubes after she was diagnosed as in a vegetative state.

“Given the lack of a living will, a trial was held to determine what Terri Schiavo’s wishes would have been …” Wikipedia says. Are you lacking a living will?

Aggressive medical intervention leaves nearly two million Americans confined to nursing homes and more than 1.4 million Americans remain so medically frail as to survive only through the use of feeding tubes. As many as 30,000 persons are kept alive in comatose and permanently vegetative states.

You probably know what kind of measures you want utilized to keep you alive, or not, under what types of circumstances.

Perhaps the challenge is to determine who your agent will be when you can’t verbalize those requests.

The best approach is to talk to the person you think would be the best candidate and explain thoroughly what you want and ask them point blank if they would be willing to carry out those orders. If they say they can and will, all the better, if they can’t commit then find someone else who can.

Tell all your family members who will be responsible. If there’s going to be a dispute, better to have one now than later. And remember, you aren’t carving these documents in stone, they can be changed as often as you like and certainly should be reviewed regularly. The point is to get it done. Today.

Kathy Hubbard is a trustee on Bonner General Hospital Foundation Board. She can be reached at 264-4029 or by email at kathyleehubbard@yahoo.com.