End-Of-Life Planning

originally published July 16, 2008

I appreciated the Flagpole’s coverage of the panel that discussed the documentary The Business of Being Born ["Having It at Home," Apr. 30]. This film explored the problems that arise when people do not have the option of a midwife when creating a birth plan. The need to have options when giving birth is important. At the other end of life’s spectrum, there is another natural event that could use the love and attention of a caring guide. Someone will likely be helping us all through the process of dying at some point. Just as a birth plan is crucial when giving birth, a plan for dying is necessary. Our death process will be better if we specify what type of treatment we want and designate a person who will represent us if we cannot make our own wishes known. This way, our dying will be congruent with our beliefs and also will be less stressful for those who are helping us through the process. Now more than ever, we all need to fill out advance directives forms.

Dying can be scary to consider. Even scarier for me is the idea of being in a position of not being able to communicate my wishes and having confusion about what type of treatment I do and do not want. One study conducted by the Oregon Health Sciences University discovered, not surprisingly, that families who had to remove a loved one from life support without a prior written or spoken understanding experienced higher-than-normal levels of stress for months after the death. Increasingly, as medical technology advances to a point where many basic body functions such as breathing and digestion can be maintained even as death is occurring, death involves some element of choice about withholding “heroic” measures. In Georgia, if choices need to be made and no legal document is available to direct health care providers to what the patient desires in terms of end-of-life care, those choices default to a spouse, then adult children, then a parent, then a sibling. This makes advanced directives especially important for single people and those in same-sex relationships or other types of relationships in which the person that should be making the decisions is not legally recognized.

Luckily, with an act passed in Georgia in 2007, making our end-of-life wishes known is easier than ever. An advanced directive form that is short, easy to understand, and that does not require notarization is available online by typing “advance directive” into the search box.

This directive tells loved ones who should act as the health care agent, as well as offering a place to lay out specific wishes for care. Completed with the health care agent present, the form allows people to talk through their end-of-life plan with family and friends in case they cannot communicate that plan later. It takes less than 15 minutes to fill out.

Death is as natural a process as birth, and our experience of it is inevitable. We need to have a plan in place to make the experience as positive as it can be.

Kate Morrissey

Athens

Parkhandling

originally published July 16, 2008

I wanted to comment about the article concerning panhandlers and how ridiculous the whole idea of enforcement is. Don't get me wrong - panhandling is a real problem and I get pretty annoyed with it. But how can you consider the panhandling problem without considering the homeless problem? How exactly do they plan to prosecute these people? Fine them? Put them in jail? Who do you think pays for that? Or maybe we should cart them back to the towns that dropped them off here in the first place? The problem is that the national economy is going to hell in a handbasket and the local economy is crappier than most of Georgia - rather nonsensically, considering the presence of the university and all that football money. What we need is for the university and the city government to spend more on employing people and giving them a decent wage and less on some of the construction projects that seem to never end. Meanwhile, if the downtown business authority really wants to focus on a worthwhile target, how about Prestige Parking? You wanna know what really prevents people from wanting to go downtown? Having to spend an extra five dollars before they can eat, drink, shop or enjoy any entertainment. Panhandlers don't force you to give them money - that would be burglary. This is a genuine problem that is really seriously cutting into business, and it's hard for me to believe that the handful of banks and churches that have cut a deal with these mercenaries really need whatever measly percentage that they make from this deal. It's ridiculous that Athens establishments like X-Ray Cafe, Barnett's, and my previous employer, Tavern at the Arch (which was the same management as the original Athens Mellow Mushroom, by the way) go belly up at the expense of this stupid business that extorts people instead of providing any kind of service.

Spencer Rich

Athens