Planning? What for? I don’t want to think about that now, I’ll deal with it later!
Many of us spend a lot of time planning things. Planning what to have for dinner, where to go on vacation, how to pay for our children’s education, what we will do after we retire from our working lives. I suspect that the Baby Boom generation (those born between 1946 and 1964) is full of people who actually earn their livings “planning.” Funny, then how most of us never plan for the one thing we know we will all go through, the dying process and our eventual deaths!
For some planning for death, illness and incapacitation is morbid and to be avoided. For others, it is full of unknowns and unimaginable and so thinking about it is avoided. However, coming to that stage in your life without a plan, is a mistake resulting in rather predictable complications for families and friends.
According to the Associated Press, it is estimated that roughly 64 percent of Baby Boomers do not have a living will (advance directive for health care) or health care proxy (power of attorney for health care)! What’s up with that? How can that be? We (I am within that age group so I can say “we”) all grew up hearing about Karen Ann Quinlan and her family’s lengthy fight to give her a dignified death rather than a prolonged, painful life. We couldn’t avoid hearing about Terri Schaivo and the battle between her husband and her parents over her right to a dignified death. Shouldn’t we all know by now that planning for these eventualities is important? Is it really that we all still think that we will somehow live forever? That it will never happen to us? I’m here to tell you that it will, we might be able to put it off longer than our parents, but it will happen to us someday and then we really should be prepared, if not for ourselves, for our families and friends.
What is a Living Will?
A Living Will also called an Advance Directive, is a document that allows you to outline the types of care you wish to receive if you are unable to speak for yourself because of an illness or incapacity in the future. The document may also contain sections that spell out the details of your wishes regarding burial or cremation (maybe you want your cremains made into a diamond, which is my current plan, check it out at: http://www.lifegem.com/) wishes, the names of your physicians and where you want to be cared for.
What is a Health Care Proxy?
Also known as a Health Care Power of Attorney this document simply appoints someone you trust to make your medical decisions for you should you be unconscious or unable to communicate your own wishes effectively.
Don’t think your exercise regime will prevent you from needing these documents – face it – we are all going to get old! When we get old we are going to need help! Hopefully you will have put down in writing who you trust to help you with these things and made that document known to your family and medical providers!
These documents are not just for the sick and elderly. Life is unpredictable but it is not so unpredictable that you can say it is not clear whether you will ever come to the end of your lifetime!
Unfortunately, anyone, healthy or otherwise, can be struck with an unfortunate or unforeseeable illness, become a casualty in an auto accident, or sustain a life threatening injury, at any time. And even if you are lucky enough that none of those things happen to you, you will, eventually, come to the end of your life! Most likely, when you are near the end of your life, you will need to rely on others to help you make important decisions regarding your health care. Be prepared and help them help you with the proper documents. Living wills that detail specific instructions can spare families a painful fight over what care is appropriate.
Highlighting the importance of drafting an end of life plan cannot be stressed enough. A simple document could save your family and friends years of drawn out fighting and court appearances.
Have a great weekend, but don’t forget to plan!
Mary!
Hello world!
Welcome to WordPress.com. After you read this, you should delete and write your own post, with a new title above. Or hit Add New on the left (of the admin dashboard) to start a fresh post.
Here are some suggestions for your first post.
- You can find new ideas for what to blog about by reading the Daily Post.
- Add PressThis to your browser. It creates a new blog post for you about any interesting page you read on the web.
- Make some changes to this page, and then hit preview on the right. You can always preview any post or edit it before you share it to the world.
