Having an Advanced Directive Does Not Guarantee a Peaceful Death

For the past seven months, I’ve carried around my husband’s advance medical directive in my purse. During this time, I’ve shown this lawyer-prepared and notarized document to dozens of doctors, nurses, ambulance crews, surgeons, dialysis center teams, hospital emergency room workers and administrators, intake staff, nurse practitioners, nursing home staff, medical transportation drivers, and others. I’m an expert in summarizing its contents, and my 11-second elevator pitch goes like this: Do not resuscitate. No heroic measures. A gentle and peaceful death, pain-free and with dignity. Please....

Death, we agreed, was a natural consequence of life and not something to be feared. And so we prepared the legal documents that were intended to give him control over the end of his life.

A fat lot of good it did us. On Jan. 4, my husband died, and I threw his advance medical directive into the fireplace. It worked better as a fire starter than it did as it was originally intended.

We simply had no clue that dying and medicine, as it is commonly practiced, exist at cross purposes. And in my husband’s case, the engine of life-prolonging medicine decisively won....Medical good intentions notwithstanding, prolonging death is not the same as extending life. Death isn’t the boogeyman; turning the dying process into a torturous experience is. And yet the medical establishment just can’t seem to help itself when it comes to dying.

Efforts To Prolong My Husband's Life Cost Him An Easy Death