living will Archives - Fran Moreland Johns

Is there a fate worse than death? Yes. In the U.S., often it is the fate of dying slowly: aggressively treated, over-treated and worn down by the system until that fate has made death truly a blessed relief.

Deborah Wright, an ordained Presbyterian minister and writer now working in secular fields while simultaneously serving as personal pastor to many, forwarded an article that proves out the fate-worse-than-death highlighted in this and recent other articles (see June 25 post below.) The fact that stands out, she comments, is that “the length of time we use palliative care services is growing shorter — because we start it too late.”

We start palliative care too late, we treat too aggressively and too long. The opening story in AP writer Marilynn Marchione’s thoughtful, poignant article just published in Daily Finance serves as a classic example:

The doctors finally let Rosaria Vandenberg go home.

For the first time in months, she was able to touch her 2-year-old daughter who had been afraid of the tubes and machines in the hospital. The little girl climbed up onto her mother’s bed, surrounded by family photos, toys and the comfort of home. They shared one last tender moment together before Vandenberg slipped back into unconsciousness.

Vandenberg, 32, died the next day.

That precious time at home could have come sooner if the family had known how to talk about alternatives to aggressive treatment, said Vandenberg’s sister-in-law, Alexandra Drane.

Instead, Vandenberg, a pharmacist in Franklin, Mass., had endured two surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation for an incurable brain tumor before she died in July 2004.

“We would have had a very different discussion about that second surgery and chemotherapy. We might have just taken her home and stuck her in a beautiful chair outside under the sun and let her gorgeous little daughter play around her — not just torture her” in the hospital, Drane said.

Marchione tells other stories of patients who might have had far more peaceful final days — and of patients who chose extensive, aggressive or experimental treatment for a variety of reasons. It should be the individual’s choice. But the reality is that discussion of palliative care or hospice care (there is a difference: hospice involves declining further treatment; with the newer “palliative care” concept some therapies may be continued) simply doesn’t happen until too late. If it happened sooner, many of us — likely including Rosaria Vandenberg — would choose hospice care over aggressive end-of-life treatment. But physicians are too busy talking treatment, and patients have not considered their other choices. Comfort and peace lose to the system.

An article posted today on the website of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization points the finger in the right direction, right at you and me. If we took the time and energy to write our advance directives, and talk them over with family and friends, millions of days of suffering and millions of wasted dollars would be saved.

Recent media coverage on the challenges patients and families face with overtreatment of a life-limiting illness brings the issues of hospice and palliative care and advance care planning to public attention.

“It’s important to remember that quality of life and a patient’s personal wishes, beliefs and values must be a factor when making care decisions brought about by a serious or terminal illness,” said J. Donald Schumacher, president and CEO of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

“Discussions helping patients and families understand the many benefits of hospice and palliative care must be more common and held long before a family faces a medical crisis,” Schumacher added.

Advance care planning—which includes completing a living will and appointing a healthcare proxy—is somewhat like planning a road trip to an unfamiliar destination. Very few people would expect to get to a destination safely and comfortably without having a well-thought-out map in hand. Yet, it’s estimated that 70 percent of Americans have not completed a living will.

A living will charts the course for your healthcare, letting your family and health care providers know what procedures and treatments you would want provided to you—and under what conditions.

A healthcare proxy or healthcare power of attorney form, allows you to choose someone you trust to take charge of your healthcare decisions in case you are unable to make those decisions yourself.

Advance directives can be changed as an individual’s situation or wishes change.

Still, you and I put it off. Or you may be putting it off, at least, and if so you are taking an absurdly unnecessary risk. You could, instead, download free forms, fill them out and avoid that risk.

Deborah Wright has shepherded countless friends and family members through their final days, and knows what a blessing hospice and palliative care can be. Problem is, though, “we start it too late.”

Americans are treated, and overtreated, to death – DailyFinance.

“We have to get out of the way,” she said; “make room for other, new people on the planet.” Accomplished author/editor Cyra McFadden, at a recent dinner party, was talking about a group of women scientist friends’ excitement over discoveries they have made which show promise of extending life a fraction longer. Cyra was in fierce, though silent, disagreement.

It may be time for those of us who disagree with the rampant prolong-life-at-all-costs theories to stop being silent.

Americans are, in fact (as reported in Epoch Times below, and elsewhere) living longer all the time. Sometimes that’s just fine, especially if we’re in reasonable health. But what if we’re not? What if we’d just as soon be getting on with whatever follows this temporary time on earth? Millions and millions of people are living for hours, days or extended months and years in circumstances they would not choose simply because we have created a culture that says we must be kept alive no matter what.

Average life expectancy continues to increase, and today’s older Americans enjoy better health and financial security than any previous generation. Key trends are reported in “Older Americans 2008: Key Indicators of Well-Being,” a unique, comprehensive look at aging in the United States from the Federal Interagency Forum on Aging-Related Statistics.

“This report comes at a critical time,” according to Edward Sondik, Ph.D., director of the National Center for Health Statistics. “As the baby boomers age and America’s older population grows larger and more diverse, community leaders, policymakers, and researchers have an even greater need for reliable data to understand where older Americans stand today and what they may face tomorrow.”

Where do we stand right now? Well, the same source that says we’re living longer and enjoying better health and financial security (hmmmm on the financial security business) reveals that Americans are “engaging in regular leisure time physical activity” on these levels: ages 45-64: 30%; ages 75-84: 20%; geezers 85 and over: 10%. Hello? Better health and financial security, just no leisure time physical activity? Could it bear some relationship to obesity factors in the same data: 30+% for men, 40+% for women?

Does living well need to be assessed in the compulsion to live long? Why not? Everyone should have the right to live at whatever weight and whatever level of inaction he or she chooses. But the system is weighted toward keeping us alive under all conditions, and bucking the system is not easy. A poignant, wrenching tale of her father’s slow decline and death — and her mother’s refusal to go down that same path — was recently told by California writer/teacher Katy Butler in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

Almost without their consent, Butler’s gifted, educated parents had their late years altered to match the system’s preferences:

They signed living wills and durable power-of-attorney documents for health care. My mother, who watched friends die slowly of cancer, had an underlined copy of the Hemlock Society’s “Final Exit” in her bookcase. Even so, I watched them lose control of their lives to a set of perverse financial incentives — for cardiologists, hospitals and especially the manufacturers of advanced medical devices — skewed to promote maximum treatment. At a point hard to precisely define, they stopped being beneficiaries of the war on sudden death and became its victims.

Given the limitless sources of victimization floating around, we should not have to add just-try-to-keep-them-alive-forever health care to the list.

My husband and I, having long ago signed advance directives with additional specific issues sheets (“If this happens, do that; if that happens, don’t do this,” etc) recently got them out and talked things over again, a very good thing to do for EVERYbody over 18. We will add dementia provisions to the existing documents while we can remember to do that (the closest you can come to avoid being warehoused in a memory-loss facility for umpteen years.) We are clear, and our friends and family understand, about having no interest in hanging onto life in a greatly diminished state if such an opportunity presents itself; for increasing thousands, it presents itself every day.

All this being said, there’s still a reasonable chance that I’ll be out of town one day when I’m in my 80s (which aren’t that far off), get wiped out by a speeding cyclist and picked up in a seriously mangled state by the paramedics, taken to a hospital that’s not Kaiser (which has all my directives on file,) miraculously brought into some heavily-sedated state of being because the hospital doesn’t consult Kaiser or the living will registry (which also has my directives) and kept alive by assorted mechanisms. By the time my husband or children get there to insist everything be unplugged — which of course will involve long hours and possibly court action — hundreds of thousands of dollars will have been needlessly spent.

I consider myself a highly valuable member of society, and my life a gift from God. But would those dollars not be better spent on a few kids needing specialized care?

Epoch Times – Americans Are Living Longer, According to Federal Report.

Tag: living will

On being treated to death – Part II