Driving to work on Friday, I had the treat of listening to NPR’s Robin Young interview Howard Gleckman on his new book, Caring for Our Parents: Inspiring Stories of Families Seeking New Solutions to America’s Most Urgent Health Crisis. I only caught the end of the interview, but it was so reassuring to hear him close with this message: we should all have our health care proxies and end of life wishes in order.
This is what I talk about when I give presentations and when I meet with clients. I’ve blogged about it – read about health care proxies here and about end of life wishes here. This is such an important message to get across to people. A health care proxy lets someone else make health care decisions for you when you cannot make or communicate them yourself – anesthetic fog? dementia? shock from an accident? Without a health care proxy in place, your family could very well be forced to go to court and waste a lot of money, time, and emotion.
And making your end of life wishes clear will save your family a tremendous amount of anxiety, guilt, grief, and arguments. Give your family the gift of peace by taking the burden off of their collective shoulders – tell them ahead of time what you would want in a difficult situation.
It gives me hope to hear Mr. Gleckman advising a national audience to get their health care proxies and end of life statements in order. So many families would have such an easier time caring for their loved ones with these documents in place.