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29 Mar 05 - 11:35 PM (#1446562) Subject: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: Amos In case you want a model: Florida - Living Will This version would leave no room for doubt: I, _________________________ (fill in the blank), being of sound mind and body, unequivocally declare that in the event of a catastrophic injury, I do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means. I hereby instruct my loved ones and relatives to remove all life-support systems, once it has been determined that my brain is longer functioning in a cognizant realm. However, that judgment should be made only after thorough consultation with medical experts; i.e., individuals who actually have been trained, educated and certified as doctors. Under no circumstances -- and I can't state this too strongly -- should my fate be put in the hands of peckerwood politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it. Furthermore, it is my firm hope that, when the time comes, any discussion about terminating my medical treatment should remain private and confidential. Living in Florida, however, I am acutely aware that the legislative and executive branches of state government are fond of meddling in family matters, and have little concern for the privacy and dignity of individuals. Therefore, I wish to make my views on this subject as clear and unambiguous as possible. Recognizing that some politicians seem cerebrally challenged themselves (and with no medical excuse), I'll try to keep this simple and to the point: 1. While remaining sensitive to the feelings of loved ones who might cling to hope for my recovery, let me state that if a reasonable amount of time passes -- say, ____ (fill in the blank) months -- and I fail to sit sit up and ask for a cold beer, it should be presumed that I won't ever get better. When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my spouse, children and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day. 2. Under no circumstances shall the members of the Legislature enact a special law to keep me on life-support machinery. It is my wish that these boneheads mind their own damn business, and pay attention instead to the health, education and future of the millions of Floridians who aren't in a permanent coma. 3. Under no circumstances shall the governor of Florida butt into this case and order my doctors to put a feeding tube down my throat. I don't care how many fundamentalist votes he's trying to scrounge for his brother in 2004, it is my wish that he plays politics with someone else's life and leaves me to die in peace. 4. I couldn't care less if a hundred religious zealots send e-mails to legislators in which they pretend to care about me. I don't know these people, and I certainly haven't authorized them to preach and crusade on my behalf. They should mind their own business, too. 5. It is my heartfelt wish to expire quietly and without a public spectacle. This is obviously impossible once elected officials become involved. So, while recognizing the wrenching emotions that attend the prolonged death of a loved one, I hereby instruct my relatives to settle all disagreements about my care in private or in the courts, as provided by law. If any of my family goes against my wishes and turns my case into a political cause, I hereby promise to come back from the grave and make his or her existence a living ____ (fill in the blank). |
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30 Mar 05 - 07:48 AM (#1446777) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST I posted this in another thread days ago, Amos. But hey, thanks for trying to take credit for it. |
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30 Mar 05 - 08:57 AM (#1446832) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST living wills don't do it anyway - you needto appoint a medical proxy. |
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30 Mar 05 - 09:00 AM (#1446841) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST That is correct. Your living will wishes aren't worth much. The only thing that will likely stand up in court post-Schiavo (once the US Congress and Dubya finishes us all off with Schiavo specific legislation) is a durable power of attorney for health care. |
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30 Mar 05 - 09:21 AM (#1446857) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: Amos Sorrreee amigo. You guys hash it out. A |
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30 Mar 05 - 10:39 AM (#1446910) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST,rr Hey, I missed it it the other thread so thanks Amos! That is funny and true! I'll change the state and add tequilla instead of beer and off to the notery I go! Rustic |
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30 Mar 05 - 11:50 AM (#1446944) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST,CarolC LOL |
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30 Mar 05 - 01:27 PM (#1446977) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST,catspaw49 Just shows how far we seem to have deteriorated around here when jokes produce arguments!!! And if posting the same joke repeatedly is a crime, then Art and I are in real trouble............. Spaw |
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30 Mar 05 - 01:38 PM (#1446981) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST,McGrath of Harlow But of course there was no kind of "living will" in the case of Terri Schiavo. Just a claim made, well after the event, by the husband and some reported remarks in conversation, which a court decided to accept as an equivalent declaration of her firm intention on this matter. Personally I'd sooner trust my family than leave it just to doctors. Or courts. |
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31 Mar 05 - 01:25 PM (#1448082) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: robomatic Amos, I don't think the 'will' you posted captures any humor in this situation, nor satire, nor irony. It is rather crude and on a par with the stuff Rush Limbaugh uses in his heavy handed occasional attempt at levity. Please note, that is not in opposition to the content, just my aesthetic gut reaction. 1) "A Living Will" is a signed and witnessed legal document which should specify a range of situations that the signer might experience in an extreme care situation, and it usually has a menu with boxes for options to be taken. the signer fills in the boxes. This gives a ROUGH approximation of the wishes of the signer. The document might be called "Health Care Proxy" in some states. 2) Whatever it is called, to be any good the document should specify a person, often designated the "health care proxy". That person interprets the document, especially in cases that fall through the cracks as it is impossible to predict exactly what is going to happen to one. Medical professionals in my experience are very happy when such a document specifies someone to be in charge, and they can be very informative and cooperative with that person. 3) The document might be signed and sealed, but it does no good unless it is KNOWN TO EXIST and a legal copy is AVAILABLE. If there is no Health Care Proxy, who is going to make sure that the powers that be in the hospital or emergency room know your wishes? So. Get the thing made out, get several copies made, specify the proxy, make sure the proxy knows he/she is it, have an ALTERNATE PROXY should the first not be available, and make sure they know from you how you want to be treated. This is far more useful than merely end-of-life concerns. If you are in the hospital but weak, disoriented, drugged, etc, it is of primary importance to have someone else there who will act in your best interest, take notes, take names, take action. The hospitals I've seen are basically processing facilities. they will take you in and churn you out after a fashion, but you may have a hundred questions you will never get the answer to. |
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01 Apr 05 - 01:36 PM (#1449250) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST This is great Thread I love the way you think thanks !! |
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01 Apr 05 - 01:49 PM (#1449265) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: Amos Aw geeze, robo; give a guy a break, the damn thing is a funny rejoinder to mass hysteria, not a legal document!! A |
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01 Apr 05 - 03:12 PM (#1449356) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: beadie Robomatic: In Wisconsin, there are two separate and distinct documents, each defined by its own statute, one to create a "Living Will (Declaration to Physicians)" and the other to create a "Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care (what you call a proxy)." The Living Will has no effect whatsoever unless the patient is determined by two physicians, acting independently, to be "terminal." In that situation, the document acts on its own, not requiring the intervention of a third party or proxy. The document communicates the patient's intentions and desires directly to the physician. A Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care, on the other hand, becomes effective whenever the patient is determined by two physicians to be "incapacitated" regardless of whether or not there is a terminal condition, or even any active disease at all. The agent (Proxy) under this document is required to attempt to determine the wishes of the patient as best as possible and, failing that, to use any means available to determine what the patient would want in the way of health care (asking the patient, written statements, recollection of prior conversations, whatever . . .) and then to act according to those wishes. |
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02 Apr 05 - 03:05 PM (#1450251) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: Peace So here we are, Good Will Hunting. |
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02 Apr 05 - 03:29 PM (#1450269) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: Amos So here's another: Living will is the best revenge By ROBERT FRIEDMAN Published March 27, 2005 http://www.sptimes.com/2005/03/27/Columns/Living_will_is_the_be.shtml Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says: * In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me. * I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts. * I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life. * I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well. * I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife. * I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own. * I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them. * I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation. * I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood. * I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage. * Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy. * In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior. * And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign. * I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private. * Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life." * I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care. * And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue. Robert Friedman is editor of Perspective. He can be reached at friedman@sptimes.com ¬(c) Copyright 2002-2005, St. Petersburg Times |
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03 Apr 05 - 12:23 PM (#1450864) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: saulgoldie That second one is good, too. I sent the original along with a note about the seriousness of the matter, and the responses have been unwaveringly positive. They liked the humor, and understood the importance of the issue and were making plans (as am I) to fill out and file all the necessary papers and motions so that their own situations do not become the circus that Terri Schiavo's did. Do you suppose that "W" or his co-conspirators had any inkling that this was going to so completely backfire? |
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03 Apr 05 - 12:30 PM (#1450870) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: GUEST I think the best protection not to have your personal situation turn into something like the Schiavo circus, is to not have parents like hers. And if you do, make sure your paperwork states clearly they aren't to be allowed to do ANYTHING on your behalf. |
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03 Apr 05 - 02:41 PM (#1450945) Subject: RE: BS: Living Will for Floridians From: Mary in Kentucky Thanks. Medical proxy is the term I've been trying to remember. When Hubby and I filled out our Living Wills at the lawyer's office, we had to name three people in order for a "proxy" in case we were incapable of making decisions for ourselves. Our lawyer wanted us to name the three independently of each other, in other words, we communicated them to our lawyer without the other person in the room. Later when Hubby and I compared notes, we listed the same three in the same order! |