End of life medical care
I am writing this because I help people make decisions about end of life medical care. I am not a doctor; I am a lawyer. I constantly hear from my clients about how their loved ones were tortured before they died. That’s right. I said tortured. Not suffered. What they are telling me is that their parents were given useless care, wasteful care, and futile care. And, for many of them, unwanted care. Unwanted treatment seems especially common near the end of life.
I believe one of the most urgent issues facing American medical care today, is people getting medical interventions that if they were more informed, they would not want. It happens all the time. The U.S. medical system was built to treat anything that might be treatable, at any stage of life, even near the end, when there is no hope of a cure.
Yet, most of my clients tell me they would prefer quality time and relative normalcy to all-out intervention. Let’s face it – it’s almost impossible to be really in charge when we are sick and in the hospital. We are helpless, confused, and scared. We must exercise control while we still have it-before we get sick.
Law Offices of Debra G. Simms
At the Law Offices of Debra G. Simms, we help our clients make end of life, quality of life, decisions by preparing legal documents that direct who will make medical decisions for us once we cannot do so on our own, and documents that direct how far medical treatment should go if we are in a vegetative state, an end-stage condition, or terminal condition and there is no hope of recovery. We, at the Law Offices of Debra G. Simms believe that when people receive good communication and understand what’s involved, many will not want aggressive treatment at the end of life. Call us for a free appointment to discuss your legal rights to end of life medical decisions. It’s YOUR life.
