A living will is a document that sets your end-of-life care priorities and instructs the medical personnel about treatments and manipulations you would not like to have once you’re unable to voice your decisions.
The document becomes valid once your doctor and one visiting physician confirm your inability to make informed decisions because of being permanently unconscious.
So, do you have a living will ready? Or do you think it’s a document only the elderly need?
Here we present five strong reasons to download DIY living will forms from the FormsPal website and have a living will ready at all times.
If you’re still in doubt about whether you need such a document, read on to make an informed decision.
Contents
1. A Chance to Get Your Healthcare Preferences Respected
Life-sustaining options are numerous today. So, even after you suffer a severe brain injury or have multiple organ failure, you can still live (almost) eternally.
It is the wonder of medical innovation and progress that makes it possible. On the one hand, the practice is promising, with some forward-looking and super-rich people dreaming of having their injured bodies conserved until the moment when medicine has the cure for their condition.
On the other hand, your family will suffer spiritually and financially by visiting your unconscious body at a hospital for many years.
If that’s the gloomy perspective you want to avoid (preferring to die once and for all if you’re destined to), then a living will help you avoid these unnecessary manipulations with your crippled organism.
Indicate that you don’t want to be brought back to life after clinical death, that you don’t need life-sustaining apparatuses after getting permanently unconscious, and refuse from artificial feeding and ventilation appliances. That’s a path to quicker and more natural death, even in hospital settings.
2. Freeing Your Family Members From Hard Choices
Having a family member in a coma or severely injured is a tough challenge for anyone.
Be it your mother, husband, or children, they will undoubtedly want to prolong your life as much as they can, feeling personally responsible for your well-being and not letting you go.
But it is in your power to set the time limits and conditions for facing dignified death instead of remaining a vegetable for years to come.
Write a living will, and your healthcare provider will be urged to adhere, even if your family members want a different standard of care for you.
3. Cutting the Avoidable Expenditure
The cost of end-of-life care in the USA exceeded $365 billion in 2018, with only a tiny portion of expenditures covered by the government and the disproportionate part of this financial burden going to individuals and their families.
Due to (or because of) healthcare improvements, such as patient intubation, ventilation, and life-sustaining procedures, people can be kept alive almost eternally, with the family paying for their relative’s hospital stay mostly from their pockets.
So, if you die, you might be considered lucky (sorry for the sarcasm), as it will cost you and your family much less than taking care of your crippled body for years to come.
To avoid this trouble, you can stipulate the refusal from life-sustaining manipulations, ventilation, resuscitation, etc.
In this way, you can reduce the time spent at a hospital without chances for recovery or regaining consciousness, saving a great deal of money from your savings for your family and children’s well-being.
4. Getting Ready
We are all humans, and we’re vulnerable to traumas, accidents, or terminal illnesses affecting us all of a sudden.
Thus, thinking that you don’t need a living will while you’re young and beautiful is a bit short-sighted.
It’s natural to hope to live until old age and die somewhere in the middle of our 80s, 90s, or even 100s. But we never know what expects us around the corner.
Any of us can be hit by a car tonight or fall victim to a train crash when going to work tomorrow.
Thus, having a living will is not about expecting death or disability but more about getting ready for such a situation.
Even young people often get incapacitated unexpectedly, with their families facing tough decisions and dilemmas.
Free yourself from these doubts and bites of conscience by fixing all your preferences in a living will document. It will serve as your healthcare provider’s guidance at any moment you might need it.
5. Assuming Control Over End-of-life Decisions
Though American healthcare is patient-friendly and patient-centered, many patients detest the feeling of helplessness and passivity of getting into the state healthcare machine’s hands.
Suppose you don’t want to become the captive of this system for infinite periods and wish to die with dignity without a prolonged hospital stay.
In that case, this is possible with expressly set terms in your living will.
As you can see, having a living will create today has many sound reasons and justifications.
You can step into tomorrow with peace of mind by writing it today, regardless of what that day has in store.
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