When it comes to your advance directives and planning your living will, there are a lot of choices for you to consider. When you make a living will online and start working on your Healthcare Directive Action Plan, you will be guided through different decisions regarding your end-of-life care. Based on your decisions and choices, your living will begin to take shape.
A living will versus a last will and testament are two different things. A living will state your wishes regarding your end-of-life care in the event that you are in a persistent vegetative state, irreversible coma, and are unable to communicate. Your Healthcare Directive Action Plan is a living will that contains your advance directives for care.
On the other hand, a last will and testament is a document that specifies how you would like your assets distributed and utilized after your death. A last will does not contain information regarding your wishes for medical care and treatment should you face a critical, end-of-life condition.
Should you find yourself incapacitated and unable to communicate, your living will guide your healthcare agent, family members, and your healthcare providers through your wishes for medical support. It is important that you discuss your plan with your family and think through the different decisions that are available to you. Then, you need to ensure your wishes are clearly communicated. After all, most people make different end-of-life choices for themselves versus what their relatives or family may decide for them.
There are many different end-of-life choices. These choices can range anywhere from ensuring all available measures are taken to keep you alive to providing no care whatsoever. Other choices may be to only provide limited intervention or simply comfort measures if you are at a critical end-of-life stage in your treatment. All the choices are yours and should reflect what you feel is your personal definition of meaningful recovery and an acceptable state of life.
When you embark on your Healthcare Directive Action Plan, our system will guide you as you make a living will online and all of these critical decisions. Throughout the process, you will be informed of what the different options mean in order that you can be fully informed and comfortable with your wishes.
Also, if you want to change them later, you can. You will be reminded periodically to review your living will template and ensure it still reflects your desires. You can update it and change it at any time from anywhere.
Get StartedFor this choice, you would want all measures to keep you alive for as long as possible. This could include using everything from feeding tubes, chest compressions (CPR), and breathing tubes. While these measures may keep you alive longer and help you receive constant medical care, they could mean a lower quality of life. At some point, your family and healthcare providers must decide when to stop taking life-saving measures.
With limited measures, you will be kept comfortable, and if you wish, CPR or other hospital resources can be used to help try and keep you alive. However, no extensive measures will be taken, such as breathing machines or feeding tubes.
In this case, only a palliative team will address your physical, psychological, and spiritual pain and suffering. There will be no attempts to cure your illness, and no life-saving measures will be taken to extend your life, and, in most cases, patients die in the comfort of their homes.
Here you refuse all care and treatments. You manage the pain on your own or with the help of others. You have total control over your own treatment as long as you can communicate, but the pain can be difficult to manage.
There are additional directives that you can consider. Some include:
1. Protects You When You No Longer Can Communicate
Living wills protect people when they can no longer advocate for themselves. When you can no longer communicate your wishes, this document is here to help make sure everyone knows how you want to be cared for. If something were to leave you in a state where you can no longer talk, the doctors and nurses caring for you have much of the authority to dictate what happens to you once you can no longer communicate your wants.
2. Prevents Major Arguments Between Family Members
Having a living helps keep the peace between family members in trying times. When the decision of your care is not up to the medical professionals in charge, the stress of choosing can be immense. If your family disagrees on what should be done with you, it can relationships become strained and can even be severed. No one wants that during such a tough and difficult time. With a living will, you can still make your own choice, and no one else needs to make it for you eliminating any argument or debate about what should happen to you.
3. You Can Still Control the Medical Treatments/Procedures
A living will also allow you to choose the level of medical treatments and procedures that take place. When you are too ill to communicate, a living will informs and requires doctors to fulfill your wishes in writing. You can still make your own decisions instead of letting the doctors or your family make choices you may disagree with.
4. Reduce Potentially Unwanted Medical Bills for Your Family
Medical bills are an unfortunate part of prolonged hospital care. If you wind up in a coma or a vegetative state, a living will dictate how this situation should be handled. Many people would rather choose to pass on than live an additional 5, 10, or 20 years on life support. Partly because they don’t feel there is any quality of life in that situation. The other reason is that being kept alive through life support creates enormous medical bills. Bills that your family will have to pay. If you do not have a living will that lets people know how you want this situation handled, your family may be left with crippling medical bills. A living will help ensure this won’t happen to you or your family.
5. Provides Peace of Mind for you and your family
Finally, living provides you with peace of mind. These documents give you the control to prevent more unfortunate things from happening. Tragic situations are hard enough. Knowing that your family has clear directions on how you want to manage your end-of-life decisions makes the difficult time easier for everyone.
The last thing you want is for people outside of your family to have control over what happens to you under tragic circumstances. Creating your living will is easy with My Living Wishes and it will likely be one of the best decisions you can make.
