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Years ago, a controversy ensued in the medical community regarding a 39-year-old woman’s right to die. Have you heard about the Terri Schiavo case before? Schiavo had been on life support for over nine years since a heart attack prevented oxygen from entering her brain. That was fatal indeed. But the dilemma was that she would have wanted to stop her life support, but her family wanted her to continue fighting for her life.
The case, which gained national attention, taught people about the patients’ right to decide for his or her medical treatment. The patient’s decision about medical care is best expressed in a document called the living will or advance directive. Creating such a document saves a patient’s family from the emotional troubles due to dilemmas like that faced by Schiavo’s loved ones.
If you want to lay out your wishes for medical care should you become unable to express them in the future, you may want to consider putting them down in writing. Most people over the age of 60 opt to create living wills, while only 30 percent of the young ones have written theirs. Experts recommend, though, that people beyond age 18 make their own living wills. The following are five steps in creating an advance directive.
1. Explore your options. The document you are going to write enables you to make your own decision—not your doctor or your relatives—about how long the doctors can keep you alive if you become mentally incapacitated. Thus, you need to carefully weigh your options according to your present and future situation.
2. Choose a family member or a friend who can be unwavering in pushing for your wishes and for the implementation of your advance directive. You may opt to pick a secondary advocate such as a health care professional should your primary choice becomes unable to perform his duty as an advocate of your medical care wishes.
3. Make your choices clear and foolproof. You can consult your family and friends about the kind of medical treatment that you will choose or refuse. For example, you can include in your document a resuscitation ban, which orders a doctor not to begin procedures to help you breathe again. You can also decide the kind of life support system you would like to have such as feeding tubes and dialysis.
4. Write down your will. You can ask a lawyer to draft the will for you. Every state has different laws regarding living wills, so it pays to consult a lawyer before you create one. If you want to save on cost, you can write the document yourself with the help of samples that you can find over the Internet. Likewise, you can download a free copy of a sample will online.
5. Update the document from time to time. Review it at least once a year and make revisions to your living will, if necessary. Changes in your situation can prompt you to change the kind of treatments you would want to receive or refuse—make sure that these changes are included in your will. Also, do not forget to send copies of your will to your doctor and family member.
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