The following story from The New England Journal of Medicine illustrates the importance of not just creating an Advance Healthcare Directive and a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order, but making sure your family and healthcare providers are advised of and committed to your decisions. An unconscious man with a DNR tattoo...
April 16 is National Healthcare Decisions Day, so we want to emphasize the importance of advance healthcare planning. This is a difficult conversation—no one really looks forward to sitting down with his/her loved ones and talking about end-of-life planning. Instead, people tend to ignore it and keep it buried at...
April 16 is National Healthcare Decisions Day, so we’re joining the campaign to raise the visibility and encourage advance healthcare planning. Advance Healthcare Directives (AHDs) are written directions that appoint another individual to make healthcare decisions on your behalf. We’d all like to think that we could make our own decisions...
It was October 2015 when California voters elected to become the fifth state to allow terminally ill patients to end their lives with prescriptions from their doctors. This was not an easy decision; many remember months of contentious debate; religious groups and disability rights activists heatedly opposed the law and...
End-of-life documents, an important part of California Document Preparers’ services, often lead to discussions about related issues. October’s passage of the End of Life Options Act, or the Physician-Assisted Suicide Law as it is called by its detractors, promises to remain controversial after it becomes law in January 2016. Proponents...
End-of-life documents, an important part of California Document Preparers’ services, inevitably lead to discussions about other end-of-life issues—including the controversial issue of a patient’s desire to end his or her own life. The California Senate passed the End of Life Options Act earlier in the summer, yet it was tabled...
A brother and sister came into our Oakland office, seeking our advice on what to do about their mother, who had just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. They were most concerned about getting an Advance Healthcare Directive and Power of Attorney so they could make decisions for their mother once she...
End-of-life documents are an important part of California Document Preparers’ services, and our clients often comment on related events and news stories. Last fall, we wrote a blog about the tragedy of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old woman from Walnut Creek who was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and moved to...
The heartbreaking story of Brittany Maynard, the 29-year old woman who moved to Oregon so that she could take advantage of the Death with Dignity Law, hit home for many Bay Area residents because Maynard lived right here in our own East Bay community for many years. Maynard, a graduate of...
End-of-life medical decisions can be difficult for everyone, especially when the person involved can no longer make his wishes known. By completing an advance healthcare directive, you can make your wishes known regardless of your future physical or mental state. Such a document also removes the pressure of decision making...
Author: Saul Kobrick We don’t like to think about what would happen to us if we were injured or became ill and could no longer make medical decisions for ourselves. But it happens to people of all ages, every single day. Without direction, families left to figure it out on their...
