Interpreting last wishes

There’s a great discussion going on at the New York Times’ health blog about last wishes and living wills.

We may know what our loved ones last wishes are, but when emotions come into play those wishes can be less clear:

In the case of my grandfather, he was very clear that he believed every possible effort should be made to save any life, and he supported the use of advanced life-support techniques to keep him alive. However, he also instructed his family to stop advanced life support in the event of a terminal prognosis.

What had once seemed clear was now murky. The pancreatic cancer would certainly kill him, but maybe not for months. Other health problems had put him in the hospital. Would he want treatment to continue?

We kind of went through this with my mother. Her lung cancer was obviously terminal, but a heart problem cropped up in the middle of her illness.

I went over with her numerous times what she wanted me to do if she were to stop breathing. She told me it depended upon the reason. If it were respiratory failure directly related to her lung cancer, then she wanted no measures taken, but if her heart stopped from something else and she wasn’t breathing, she wanted us to give resuscitation a try.

Now, while she thought she was clear with that, it really presented a different problem for me knowing that her lungs would never stand up to resuscitation. Fortunately, I didn’t have to face that, but I knew it was possible that I might have to decide something that may have seemed against her wishes.

A living will certainly can’t cover every scenario, but it is a framework to make decisions, and when it comes down to it, you just have to make the best decision you can.

And, it’s OK. It really is.