{"id":514,"date":"2015-04-15T14:16:59","date_gmt":"2015-04-15T18:16:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/?p=514"},"modified":"2015-04-24T15:29:53","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T19:29:53","slug":"making-healthcare-decisions-for-me-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/making-healthcare-decisions-for-me-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Healthcare Decisions for Me, Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Nancy E. Lundebjerg, MPA<\/strong><\/span>
\nChief Executive\u00a0Officer <\/strong><\/span>
\nAmerican Geriatrics Society <\/strong><\/span>
\nHealth in Aging Foundation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Have you ever imagined a time when you are unable to make decisions for yourself? Who knows how you would make decisions? What information would you want? What do you think about life-prolonging treatments? Who knows how you feel about dying? Who knows you?<\/p>\n

Have you looked at that moment through the eyes of family who may have no\u2014or every\u2014legal authority to make decisions for you? Have you thought about the range of decisions that might need to be made for you\u2014each decision likely leading to another decision and accompanied by concern that someone might not be doing what you would do if you were making this decision for yourself?<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t like thinking about those types of things\u2014at least my family doesn\u2019t, and I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if yours didn\u2019t as well. You might, like me, have an advance directive gathering dust in some corner of your home with another copy in the hands of your proxy and yet another copy stapled into a chart for a doctor you haven\u2019t seen in more than fifteen years because you\u2019ve moved on and so have they. You may have completed an advance directive as a part of writing your will, as someone recently told me they had, so you can mentally check it off your to-do list. Health Care Proxy\/Advance Care Directive. Done.<\/p>\n

But maybe we should start thinking about this as a conversation as one addressing how we would want to live rather than one focused on how we would want to die. I know how I want to die\u2013without a long decline into disability and dementia. I also know that kind of death can be hard to come by. Simply put, in this day and age, we can live for much longer than we could before.<\/p>\n

If you look at Advance Care Directive forms<\/a>, you\u2019ll see that most ask for some specificity. As an example, my home state of New York allows me to check off that I don\u2019t want blood transfusions\u2014just one of the 11 examples that the New York form provides. It\u2019s enough to make my head spin.<\/p>\n

To be honest, I am not sure I could outline every possible scenario in a way that would be a road map for my proxy. The thing I know from being a caregiver is that there will be a lot of decisions and a lot of nuances to those decisions. I know they will start small and build to a crescendo. And, at least for me, it\u2019s been helpful to balance sharing my wishes with remaining flexible\u2014not trying to control everything with a lot of instructions. That\u2019s one of the most helpful parts of selecting a healthy proxy when completing an advance directive\u2014you can identify a person you trust to do whatever is in your best interests.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to have an Advance Care Directive form completed and a decision-maker identified. No less important is empowering your decision-maker to act on your behalf. More on that in my next post.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nancy E. Lundebjerg, MPA Chief Executive\u00a0Officer American Geriatrics Society Health in Aging Foundation Have you ever imagined a time when you are unable to make decisions for yourself? Who knows how you would make decisions? What information would you want? … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[6],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514\/revisions\/533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthinaging.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}