GUIDE FOR CARE AND SUPPORT DURING SERIOUS ILLNESS
Chapter 6: Medical Decision Making: Making your wishes known
Living Will and Power of Attorney: Next steps
1. Discuss your perceptions, thoughts, and feelings about potential end-of-life decision-making with your loved ones. (See Medical Decision Making: Questions to answer.)
2. Anchor those decisions within a solid moral framework.
3. Execute a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care. (Also called 'Power of Attorney for Health Care' and an 'Attorney in Fact.')
4. Choose a loved one or trusted decision-maker and either have a lawyer complete the paperwork, or fill out a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care form. Make certain it is properly signed and witnessed, and that it is legal in the state where you live.
5. If you so choose, complete a Living Will. But be careful which form you choose. Some Living Wills have been used as a vehicle for non-morally consistent purposes, such as intentionally hastening death.
6. If you do complete a Living Will, make sure it gives your Power of Attorney for Health Care primary decision-making capacity, so that if a situation is 'murky' in terms of 'what you would have wanted,' your Power of Attorney for Health Care will have the legal power to choose in your stead.
7. Tell your loved ones details on where to find important documents, such as you will, power of attorney, durable power of attorney, living will, and any other essential financial, social, or personal information.
8. Finish unfinished business. And complete love tasks. Choose to begin the process of having meaningful conversations with your children, spouse, or loved ones. Write letters to your loved ones, leaving each of them a legacy of love and forgiveness. Ask their forgiveness for wrongs you may have perpetrated.
Remember, 'an once of prevention equals a pound of cure.' Every one of us will journey to the ECU (Eternal Care Unit) someday. It is simply a question of when. Anticipating and dealing with potential end-of-life decisions now can go a long way towards preventing family and relationship rupture later. Take care of your business now. Your family will be greatly appreciative.
Created by Consoling Grace, (c) 2006 Eileen T. Geller