An exploration of your feelings about End-of-Life Care

Most people have thought about how they would like to die or how they would react if their death was imminent. However, there seems to be a natural reluctance to discuss death and dying. Many find it difficult to talk about their views and to explain their choices to their loved ones and doctors.

Medicine’s sharp focus on achieving a cure and sustaining life, even when death is inevitable, can result in merely prolonging the patient’s suffering. If you fail to discuss your wishes and fail to provide clear guidance, the default decision when you are terminally ill may be to aggressively treat every condition, even if there is a tremendous reduction in the quality of your life, and even if there is no likely benefit to you.

If you want to make sure that you don’t needlessly suffer through unwanted treatments, you must take the time now to explore your own values. When your values are clear to you, you need to do two things: put them in writing, and, perhaps more importantly, discuss your values and choices with your loved ones.

This is a complicated subject. In order to help you get started with your exploration of your end-of-life values, I’ve prepared a worksheet which contains a series of questions relating to life-sustaining treatments and imminent death. It is a good idea to make notes as you consider these questions, so you can discuss your thoughts with others.

You can click on the following link to download the End-of-Life Values Worksheet, which you can review and complete as a guide for your health care agents, doctors, and loved ones.

Download the End-of-Life Values Worksheet (pdf document)

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Resources

If you would like to delve deeper into advance care directives and end-of-life questions, you may wish to check out the following resources and web sites.

My Five Wishes
https://fivewishesonline.agingwithdignity.org/

Natural Dying Advance Directive
www.caringadvocates.org

End-of-Life Information Center
https://www.compassionandchoices.org/eolc/

Death With Dignity National Center
https://www.deathwithdignity.org/

Compassion and Support Website
www.compassionandsupport.org/index.php

Copyright © John M. Varde, P.C., 2016

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