Never say die
Dying got so protracted and difficult it became necessary to invent the living will — a list of opt-ins and opt-outs during the last days/weeks/months. If you haven’t made one, you know you should. What a living will does not record, because it doesn’t need to, is something we also all need to decide for […]
End of Life Planning Makes a Difficult Situation Much Easier
Posted by Colin Moore One of the toughest challenges anyone can face in their lifetime is losing a loved one and then having to guess what kind of funeral and memorial service they would have wanted, also to try to locate important documents and find the answers to key questions. But it does not have to […]
Ready, steady, gone.
“Most of us do not want to die in the ICU tethered to tubes — not the quality of life we expect. Yet only 30 percent of us have made arrangements to prevent this from happening. Death and dying is a tough subject for us to broach. Be aware that very few of us will […]
ADRTs — who does and who doesn’t
From a letter in the New York Times: Older adults who do not formally convey their treatment preferences to loved ones create a distressing situation in which children and spouses must make emotionally draining (and costly) decisions about whether to continue or stop life-extending treatment. As Ms. Jacoby points out, one obstacle to planning is […]