An Important Conversation
Seth Godin, the founder Squidoo.com and best-selling author, wrote a piece on his blog recently entitled, “How Do You Want to Die?” In the piece he explains how medical professionals work to prolong life, no matter the cost of the procedures or the pain those procedures might impose.
While some people may want one kind of treatment when they are sick, others may want something entirely different. Seth realizes, and we definitely agree, that since we can’t predict the future, we need to address our goals, values, hopes and fears in a way that is meaningful and actionable to doctors and nurses in the event of an emergency. We need to communicate with our families so they understand what we’re thinking. We need to appoint calm and reasonable people to be our proxies in case the situation calls for specific decisions we can’t anticipate now.
It’s not often you hear this message from healthcare providers or professionals who deal with these issues every day, which is why we’re so glad to see Seth calling attention to this important issue on his blog. He’s an entrepreneur and author, but he realizes the importance of having this conversation with family and friends. It can be a complicated subject to broach, but it is an important one. Medical professionals and family shouldn’t have to guess what kind of medical care you want, which is why you should tell them, and at MyDirectives it’s easy to do so. It’s even easy to post one or more video messages to reinforce your points and be clear this is you saying what you want.
We want to thank Seth for raising awareness and for including a link to MyDirectives in his post. We encourage you to check out his blog and heed his advice!
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