By John Wagner for Hallmark

I received this from a friend of a sister and it cracked me up.  I actually did spend sometime last week thinking about the subject matter.  It's been over 10 years since I last updated my "Living Will" and some things are clearer to me.  I always thought I'd have a speedy, brief departure, and who knows how it will roll out in the end?  My designated burden bearers are my two sons.  I think it is somewhat of a burden, so I have tried to be a specific as possible to make it as easy as possible to do what dear old Mom asked for please.  Still, circumstances and laws change.  When I first wrote a living will, I imagined it would be no trouble to be doped up beyond pain if necessary while I wandered off to my final destination. 

Lately though, hospitals, doctors, and hospices, are under the gun not to deliver too much of those heavy-duty painkilling drugs, as though an 80+ year old enduring a painful, fatal disease would become a society destroying painkiller addict.  And there have been questions raised about "what if the level of comfort might kill the person," in my own case I say so what?  But since I have a lung disease, and opitiates tend to reduce the functions of the central nervous system, as well as being a tremendous balm for a painful end stage disease, it may be my problem too, even though I still say for myself, so what, assuming a bread truck doesn't get me first.

I found a generic form online for the State of Washington Living Will Washington State but it fails to address some other pertinent issues, such as if I am elderly and especially if I'm in ill health from other issues what kind if any surgeries or treatments should anyone be allowed to perform on me.  I have seen a fair number of my friends or relatives accept surgeries that killed them, right away or later, so they got some extra suffering tossed into the dying process.  Again, to be personal, general anaethesia is not a good event for an older person, especially one with compromised airways, I avoid it like the plague.  I stopped breathing during a minor surgery when I was in my 30's and now I am marching into my seventies.  Still if I was in horrible pain, and a little surgery would stop it, maybe it's worth the risk.

So this is more than just finding a form and filling in the blanks, I am looking for a better form, and making a list of considerations I didn't think about 10 years ago.

Do you have a living will?  What would be on your list of considerations?  And of course there is the assisted suicide question which is an option here in Oregon and Washington.  I doubt that would be my choice, but as I said you never know.