by Kris Kennedy

Created on: May 24, 2010   Last Updated: May 25, 2010

Protect End of Life Choices

The Terry Schiavo case made citizens want to control end of life choices. The argument over small government became cloudy when Congress entered into a family fight. There are steps you need to take to keep of choices your own, rather than the tool for politics whichever direction your choices lean.

Failure

Discussion alone leave decisions open to interpretation of discussions by family members. You might make statements of valuing life, but there is a circumstance in which you no longer value life. In addition, patients most likely desire to relieve the family members of agonizing decisions if they must reflect on discussions of life, then they wonder all the time whether the decision made matches the desire of the patient or serves the desire of the family to keep the person with them. There is a means to outline these plans, but discussion still plays a part later.

Living Will

Every adult should develop a living will. It is not a document that simply informs care givers that you do not want resuscitation. There may be circumstances in which you want resuscitation and you want to outline when that will be.

If young, you most likely would like someone to step in during a heart attack because of the ability to recover fully or close with medical treatment. 

This is when the circumstances can cause confusion and the living will offers the means to sort through the differences. During Terry Schiavo case, the Catholic Church weighed in on the issue because of her religious faith.

At the time, the church was following the advanced directives of Pope John Paul. The church representatives stated a living will could have changed their perspective on the issue.

A living will allows you to determine what care you will accept and who gets to make the decision. In some cases an individual might state what drugs, equipment or procedures he or she is willing to endure. These are important decisions and you need to let people know.

Communication

After you complete the document, you must make its existence known. You can file the document with the court, discuss it with family members and post a note of its existence with information of its location.

Many fire departments offer a program in which you place important information within a can than you keep in the refrigerator. Firemen enter a home and go to the refrigerator to see if there is a magnet that tells of the existence of information in the refrigerator.

You can keep knowledge of the living will there with other medical information. You probably want to carry a notice in your wallet as well, but make sure you do not hint that you have a no resuscitation order when living will only states limits.

You can control your end of life care, but you need to prepare. We all die sometime and may not want a life prolonged by technology, but lacking true life.

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