Here's something I just stumbled on. Silver lining in the Schiavo case.
Schiavo Case Spurs Interest in Living Wills
By Steve Brown
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
October 28, 2003
(CNSNews.com) - As the plight of Florida's Terri Schiavo continues to dominate news headlines, sparking debate over end of life issues, there is also a growing interest in living wills. Even the Florida Senate, which last week passed legislation that effectively forced the re-connecting of Schiavo's feeding tube, has posted a copy of a living will, along with other documents on selecting health care surrogates on its website.
Michael Schiavo's attorney is currently trying to have the new law - passed by the state legislature and signed by Republican Gov. Jeb Bush - declared unconstitutional. The law negated an earlier court ruling that had allowed Michael Schiavo to have the feeding tube removed. However, the dispute over whether Schiavo is in a "persistent vegetative state," as her husband contends but her parents dispute, has sent many families across the nation scrambling for advice in order to avoid a similar fate.
Paul Malley, president of Aging with Dignity, a Tallahassee-based non-profit that produces "Five Wishes," a document detailing a person's end-of-life wishes that is accepted in 35 states, said his phones have been ringing off the hook since people learned about Schiavo's case.
"Interest has been phenomenal," Malley told CNSNews.com. "We've seen probably a tenfold increase in the last week in orders and requests for the Five Wishes living will. People are saying that they've seen how heartbreaking this is for the people who care about Terri Schiavo and don't want that to happen in their family. So they want to make sure their wishes are known and written down on paper and communicated to their family and doctor before they get sick."
Malley estimated he's received more than 20,000 orders for the Five Wishes document from as far away as Germany. While it is unclear how foreign court systems would treat the document, Malley said Aging with Dignity consulted heavily with the U.S. legal community while crafting the document.
"We worked with the American Bar Association to write it, and it does meet the legal requirements of 35 states," Malley explained. "It's the closest thing to being a national living will that there is."
With Five Wishes, Malley said a person can designate a close relative or loved one with a "durable power of attorney," allowing the relative to comply with the first person's medical wishes in case of incapacitation. The living will, for example, allows people to specify what kind of life support treatment they do or do not want. Malley warned that if people don't choose someone to make those decisions for them, the decisions will usually be left up to the state.
"What we've done...is made it as specific as possible because a lot of state laws - when they talk about life support treatment, they include artificial food and hydration. Sometimes, people don't realize that, and they fill out a form, and they say they don't want life support treatment," Malley said. That leads to the questions of what does and does not constitute life support and which interpretation will be accepted, he added. Five Wishes provides a common definition of life support, but also includes blank lines for people to put it in their own words.
Another important consideration when filling out a living will is pain management. Malley said most people opt for as much pain prevention treatment as possible. But since pain medication can cause drowsiness, Malley said some individuals prefer to deal with the pain in order to be awake and able to talk to their loved ones for as long as possible.
"Sometimes, there are couples who have been married for a long time and think they know each other like the backs of their hands, and when they get to these sections, they're surprised by what their spouse says," Malley said. "I talked to one couple, and the husband said he definitely wanted to be able to talk to his wife and daughters even if it meant being in pain, while his wife said: 'If I haven't said it by then, it isn't going to get said.'"
According to the Aging with Dignity website, the 15 states in which Five Wishes is not legally valid either require a specific state form or that the person completing an advance directive be read a mandatory notice or "warning." Residents of these states can still use Five Wishes to put their wishes in writing and communicate their wishes to their family and physician.
However, some legal experts caution that living will documents available over the Internet may not be current with all state laws.
"The problem is that if you get something...over the Internet, it doesn't mean it won't work, but every state law is different," Ken Weiss, a Florida-based probate and real estate lawyer recently told the St. Petersburg Times. "To me, the thing is a significant enough decision; you would not want to do that."
According to the St. Petersburg Times story, attorneys typically charge $50 for a living will.
Experts agree that the important lesson for people to learn from the Schiavo case is to get their families talking about and planning for their own end-of-life care.
"This should prompt attorneys and physicians to talk to people about making living wills," Robert Stenger, who studies the crossover between law and medicine at the University of Louisville, told the Boston Globe. "This may prompt, in a very positive sense, people to prepare for a possible situation and prevent their families from going through something like this. If Terri Schiavo had written something down, it would take all the debate out of this."
Malley agreed, saying regardless of how an individual feels about the Schiavo case, everybody who hears the story is able to relate.
"People that say, 'If I were in Terri's case, I would want this'...this is why it's so important now to write those wishes down to make sure that this case doesn't repeat in families all across the country," Malley said
cnsnews.com\Culture\archive\200310\CUL20031028b.html
EDIT: I just followed the Five Wishes link and I see that it's not valid in Texas. |
