Do YOU Have a Living Will? A Health Care Surrogate?

I was just discussing this today. Something I've got to do.

Here's a form that can be printed. It looks pretty generic, but you might want to check if there is anything special that you might need in your area:

Link to Living Will, etc.

Hey, Phoenix. I appreciate that link. I was stunned when Jeb Bush ordered that woman's feeding tube to be reinserted.

Letty- So was I. Some people think that they are above the law. I hope that Bush gets his ass handed to him when Michael Schiavo sues!

The irony of it all, Phoenix. The Court made George president, and Jeb is buckin' the courts. Yes, I do hope the same.

I haven't seen that story. Does anyone have a link?

I have thought about this and it is on my to do list.

Montana- On my 2nd post in this thread click on "Link to Living Will, etc."

Thanks Phoenix. I printed them up :-)

I'll need to do something specific to Oz.

mrs. h and i have a living will and have given a copy of it to our family doctor. he told us that he agrees with having a living will; but he also told us that (in canada) a hospital may noy necessarily honour a living will. i understand that in canada there is no specific law dealing with living wills and some doctors have been sued for following the instructions given by the patient. do we have a lawyer on-board who is familiar with living wills? hbg

That's interesting, hamburger.

Thanks for the link, Phoenix! I printed out two of 'em. (One for me, one for E.G.)

If I may take this in a slightly more philosophical direction... remember that NYT article about "miswanting" that I keep referring back to? I've really thought about that in terms of a living will. I have worked with many profoundly disabled people, who have the kinds of lives or will soon have the kinds of lives that most able-bodied people find utterly horrifying. But they were often intelligent, positive, productive people in their own way.

I think of them, and I also think of a passage in "Lucky", Alice Sebold's memoir of a horrible rape and its aftermath, which goes something like, "People say they would rather die than go through something like that, but I would rather it happened to me 5,000 times than die." The urge to live, and the ability to adjust, is mighty, and from our able-bodied standpoints we may underestimate what our future selves are able to put up with and would in fact prefer to put up with if the alternative is dying.

So while I will check off the third option, so that my dying will not be artificially prolonged if I am in a persistent vegetative state, I will leave the first two blank; "I have a terminal condition," and "I have an end-stage condition."

(As an aside, is there a way to leave them more effectively blank than just, well, blank? A line through them?)

(Another tangential question... if I didn't get around to filling out the form, and something happened to me in the next 5 minutes, would the above hold any legal weight, especially given the fact that several people who know my online name know my real name? Would I want it to? That seems like it would have spooky repercussions.)