When should I start thinking about end-of-life decisions?
I think the time to start thinking about end-of-life decisions is right now, regardless of how healthy you are and so on. It's a little bit of a morbid subject matter, but it's really an important subject matter, and you'd like to think that family physicians, internists, and just regular primary care doctors would discuss that with all of their patients. In fact, in California, it's mandated that at least some form of advanced directive be discussed and the forms be offered, but it's just a very important thing and life is unpredictable. It's important to know what your parents want. They may say why are you talking about that, "Is this because you want my money?", and all those kinds of issues that come up. You do it from a place of love and you say, "I saw that lady on TV and I don't ever want to wind up like that. How do you feel about it?" Sometimes you can use maybe current events - Dr. Kavorkian or things like that, to discuss those matters with your family. But it's good to have a formalized discussion. I think that there are things that don't come easy. Sometimes maybe going with a parent to their physician, that might be a good place to discuss that and get some of the paperwork in place.
