If you had a terminal condition (expected to die within 6 months even with treatment) and were unable to communicate because you were in a comma or had a brain injury, would you want to be unplugged from a ventilator and artificial nutrition and be allowed to die with the benefit of pain killers? Or would you want to stay plugged in and fed through a tube with doctors making every conceivable effort – tracheotomy, surgery, chemo or radiation therapy, CPR perhaps multiple times – to keep you alive as long as medically possible?
There is no right or wrong answer. There is only your preference. Have you told someone what you prefer? Have you told them by executing a Living Will or Directive to Physicians?
Have you prepared a Medical Power of Attorney appointing the person you want to make health care decisions for you if you can’t make them yourself?
We hear about people fighting over whether to provide certain treatments for someone who is brain dead and say off-handedly, “I wouldn’t want to be kept alive like that,” or “Just shoot me.” But we rarely have serious conversations about what we would want to happen if we were in a permanent vegetative state or brain dead – it just seems too unlikely to happen. But if it does, friends and family are left to guess and argue about what we really would have wanted.
The people involved may have different fundamental beliefs. Doctors are trained to do all they can to preserve life – not to question if the patient would have wanted their life preserved under all circumstances. Some family members may have religious beliefs that say fight for life at all costs. Others may believe that once you are brain dead, there is no real life to maintain. If you don’t leave your preferences in writing, people can truly disagree about what you wanted. Parents may remember some comment you made when you were twenty. You spouse may remember something completely contradictory that you said more recently.
Maybe you’re thinking, I’d be brain dead in this scenario so I won’t care what they do.
But a sincere disagreement can become an expensive court battle and even a political battle with everyone claiming they know what you would have wanted. Remember the Terry Schiavo case. She has a heart attack and was declared to be in a permanent vegetative state. After eight years, her husband finally sought to have treatment stopped to allow her to die. Over the next seven years, her parents fought him. The case was appealed to the US Supreme Court four times (it refused to become involved) and the president and Congress intervened. Nasty accusations were thrown back and forth, with her parents claiming the husband wanted to kill her so he could marry again and the husband claiming her parents wanted to keep her plugged in until he agreed to give them some of the malpractice award he had received. Everyone claimed to be doing what Ms. Schiavo would have wanted – but someone was wrong. No one came out looking good.
You can control this. You can put your wishes in writing. You pick someone – again in writing – to make your medical decisions if you can’t. You can give some direction as to what treatments you think you would want if you later develop a terminal condition.
If you would like to discuss powers of attorney, living wills and other estate planning options, please call our office for a free consultation.
Megan Baumer Law Office of Michael Baumer 512-476-8707 www.baumerlaw/estate-planning
