Why are advance directives important?
I'd say advance directives are critically important, because they allow you not to wind up in a situation like Terry Shiavo. The kinds of situations that we sometimes see where somebody comes out of the hospital to the nursing home, and they've got a feeding tube and they've had a severe stroke and they are not able to communicate and you have a conversation with the family and say "Well I assumed that your dad would want everything done at all costs to keep him alive, right'? They may say, no he would have never wanted any of this. Then you think, then how did he wind up with the feeding tube? Sometimes physicians or other health care providers don't necessarily have those conversations with people. But if you've got it documented, "I don't ever want to be placed on a feeding tube", then it makes it very easy for your family to say, "My dad would have never wanted a feeding tube placed". “If he is not able to eat then we want to let nature take its course, that is what he would have wanted and we want to respect his wishes". Now I want to say, nowadays it happens a lot less then it used to. You don't have hospitals getting court orders to tube feed people against their will and thankfully. But it makes things a lot easier on everybody. It also makes things easier on your own family when they have got it written down and signed that when you were in your right mind that you would or wouldn't have wanted a certain intervention. I think it is very very important to both have the discussion and to document it, and it is best to do that when you are young because you never know when you are going to go out and get hit by a car or whatever and you don't want to wind up in a situation that you would have never wanted to be in.
