Rekombinant

“I promise you that if anything ever happens, I’ll make sure that you do not have to spend your life on those machines,” Sally told her husband.
That was my promise. I don’t even know why the subject came up. We had just come home from Dennis’s forty-fifth- birthday dinner, and I guess he was thinking about getting older, but there was nothing wrong. Nothing. Three months later I came home to find a message on our answering machine, to get down to the hospital as soon as possible. Dennis had been in an accident at work. I was sick when I saw him, tubes in and out of every opening in his body. I loved him so much. I asked the nurses if he was in pain, and they said, “I doubt very much if he can feel anything.” They were acting as if he were already dead. The doctor came in right away and said there was little hope—in fact, in his opinion there was no hope—that Dennis would ever come off those machines. I kind of lost it then, and I kept screaming over and over, “But I promised! No machines.” They had to give me something to calm me down.
Dennis’s family started to arrive one by one. As the days and weeks passed, it became very obvious that even though the wounds were healing, Dennis would never be my Dennis again. He would never come off those machines. The doctor said that in order for us to disconnect them, I needed to have a something or other for health care. I didn’t know what it was then, but I sure know now. I didn’t have it in writing, I just knew about my promise, I kept telling them that. The doctor was starting to see if there was any way around it when Dennis’s sister stepped in. She said it would be over her dead body that they would disconnect these machines. She said she and her brother were like one and there was no way he’d want to disconnect the machines.
That was eight years ago now and nothing much has changed. Dennis is still on the machines. This is still so freaky to me. It was as if Dennis somehow knew something like this would happen, and that is why he made me promise. My promise meant nothing, but I hope he knows somewhere inside him that I’m still trying to keep it.
She’s still trying today. When I asked Sally if it’s sad to see her husband this way after so many years, she said, “Not as sad as the fact that I didn’t keep my word to him.” This disagreement between the sister and Sally is a bitter dispute, most likely still in the court system as you read this. And the sad thing about this is that it did not have to be this way. If Dennis and Sally had had that “something or other” for health care, durable power of attorney for health care, in force, none of what has taken place after the accident would have happened.
The first part of putting durable power of attorney for health care in place is deciding what you would want to have happen to you if you were in a situation like Dennis’s. It requires talking to your loved ones and making your feelings known. You can choose from three basic options.
1. You want to prolong your life as long as possible, without regard to your condition, chance of recovery, or the cost of treatment.
2. You want life-sustaining treatment to be provided, unless you are in a coma or ongoing vegetative state, which two doctors, one your attending physician, will determine in their best judgment.
3. You do not want your life to be unnaturally prolonged, unless there is some hope that both your physical and mental health might be restored.
You must also decide in whose hands you want to put your life—who, that is, will make the final decision to take you off life support, if the decision ever has to be made. This person is known as the agent, and it is best to have two alternates, or coagents, in case the person you have chosen is not available. Choose people who love you, yet who are strong enough to do what you would want them to do—not an easy position to be in.