Posted on 05/20/2004 3:55:31 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
'But emerging evidence suggests "living wills" may not be living up to their promise as useful guides for families faced with tough decisions about end-of-life care.'
(Excerpt) Read more at palmbeachpost.com ...
P.S. "Old" is defined as people older than me. One time deal. No repeats.
Power of Attorney is best.
How can I ensure an ironclad "no-euthanasia-no-matter-what-the-law-becomes" with that?
The same way the Jews in WWII Germany did. You can't.
A Living Will is really a useless document unless you have a legal Health Care Surrogate designated (at least in our state that's how it works.)
The Health Care Surrogate, or it's sometimes called Health Care Power of Attorney, is legal and binding, just like a Durable Power of Attorney.
It allows the Surrogate to make end of life decisions for you should you be rendered incapable of making them.
Where the living will comes in is that it lets the Health Care Surrogate know what your end of life wishes are, and then they can follow your wishes.
Four things everybody should have, IMHO (unbelievably valuable when dealing with elderly parents, but we have these documents on ourselves too)
1. Durable Power of Attorney
2. Health Care Surrogate
3. Living Will
4. A Will
Or just send 'em off on a European vacation during a heat wave.
So the Surrogate can simply choose to defy the Living Will if it says "never starve me"?
Yep, that's how it works, so the lawyer told us to be pretty sure of whom we pick for a Surrogate.
Now let me clarify what I said.
Say in Terri Schiavo's case. If she had a living will, and her family knew about it, they could have gone to court and had Michael Schiavo prove what her Living Will said, and then it would have been binding, if the living will had been notarized.
So it can be used as a document in court, but apart from that, in the hospital setting, it is not legally binding.
When my FIL was dying, we had doctors trying to persuade us to make decisions which were clearly against his Living Will.
Make mine God please?
This is terrible!!!
Can the Surrogate be granted only a partial power, which denies, for instance, the power to decline hydration and nutrition for me.
Well, my parents had my husband designated as their Health Care Surrogate, even though my sister's and I are all in the area (I'm their POA).
Anyway, when they saw how hard he "fought" with doctors during his dad's illness, they were convinced he would be the best choice to stand up for their Living Will choices.
The surrogate is only granted power when the person becomes unable to make decisions for themselves.
In my FIL's case, we had several issues. His living will designated that he did not want to be artificially fed, or ventilated, but he did want to be hydrated and receive medication.
Doctors wanted to insert a feeding tube and ventilator (he was 92 and had suffered a series of strokes), so we had to insist, over and over that they not use a ventilator or feeding tube, since his living will directed against it.
Then we had to fight to continue hydration and medication in order to keep him comfortable till his death (he lingered for about a month).
When we refused the feeding tube and ventilator, it seemed like they took that to mean that we wanted to just give up and then wanted to deny meds, etc.
But since we had his living will and everything was spelled out in minute detail, we just insisted on exactly what he had written.
In my folks Living Will, I think they call for a certain period to try certain life sustaining techniques, and then remove them if they don't prove beneficial.
You've just got to nail, and I mean nail, down exactly what you want in your Living Will, and then designate somebody who will carry out your wishes and who cares enough to be involved in the day to day happenings at the hospital or nursing home, to be your Surrogate.
That fails to answer the question. When setting up a durable power of attorney, one may deny certain powers to the person with this power. Can the surrogate be denied certain powers as well, in analogy. That would make it simple to say "this surrogate may never dehydrate or starve me because I deny him (or her) the power to call for that, although I grant to him (or her) the power to do all else in the event of my incapacitation."
Well, then you leave the decision in the hands of the doctors. How would you make sure the doctors carried out your wishes in those areas????
The doctors need the permission from the surrogate to dehydrate or starve, at least that's how it works now. If I may deny the surrogate the power to grant that permission, the doctors can jump up and down till they're blue in the face and I still won't get dehydrated or starved.
When it came time to choose a surrogate, I approached my
Daughter-in-law, who is a CRNA. My thinking was that she would be more objective in the decision making than my children or wife.
She agreed to accept, but immediately warned me: "Remember, three days and you're outta here!" :o)
Well, in our case, the doctors never asked to see a copy of the Living Will.
The Living Will was like a non-existent piece of paper.
All they were concerned about was the Health Care Surrogate issue, but the doctors never read the Health Care Surrogate paperwork.
So I guess you could include that wording in the document, but I don't know how it would be communicated to the doctors. You'd have to have more than one person aware of your wishes and willing to go to court to prove that the Health Care Surrogate was not willing to follow your wishes.
Truth is, if it wasn't for Terry Schiavo's parents intervention, she would have been dead long ago.
So in order to accomplish what you're implying, I gues you'd need more than one person involved in the documentation of your end of life requests.
Well gee, if the doctors are not required to see proof, there's another hole. What's to prevent some pretender to surrogacy from stepping forward, at least long enough to do serious mischief?
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