DNR

Last week my mother-in-law broke her ankle. While at the hospital she went into full cardiac arrest and was dead for nine minutes. They did manage to revive her. Unfortunately, her medical directives weren’t with her. Their instructions were DNR.

So for the last four days she’s varied between being completely drugged out or suffering. Last night she thankfully passed away.

It’s a stark reminder that having medical directives isn’t enough. The hospital and ER staff need them when you go in. Or better yet have them put in your file at your local hospital. Be sure your primary care physician has a copy as well.

How Cancer is Good for Me

There are some good things about my getting cancer, seriously.

My relationships are deeper and more meaningful to me. This is especially true in my marriage. I also find I’m more thankful of little things, simple pleasures, simple surprises.

I feel better that I’ve worked up a comprehensive plan for my wife for after I die. As in most marriages, we have a division of labor. There’re a lot of things I do that will still need to be done. The plan contains the simple and complex tasks, all laid out.

I’m conducting an overdue review of wills, powers of attorney, medical directives, etc. Things that everyone should have right now, but always seem to get put off until it’s too late. Since I have a pretty good idea of the manner in which I’ll die, I’m more confident I’m getting the medical directives done just the way I want.

I’m going through my bucket list. It’s also easy to delay this until it’s too late. That’s not going to happen to me.

In the best, reasonable case I’ll only live 10 more years. That makes financial planning a lot easier. Plus, I can splurge a bit! It also means I’ll very likely die with all my faculties in reasonable shape. I don’t have to worry about being some poor soul slumped over in a wheelchair abandoned in a nursing home.

The manner of my death will likely be heavily sedated, but peaceful and painless.

The timing of my death will probably be forecast fairly accurately by the doctors I am told. That means I won’t die alone, which is comforting.

It’s not the way I wanted my life to work out, but it’s not all bad

Odds and Ends

Finished the first draft of the financial plan and things to do after I die for my wife. Her review identified a number of holes to fix. Shouldn’t take too long to get it in order.

Feels like that weird flu-ish feeling I had before has returned. Might be a late side effect of going off the Casodex, but I’m not sure.

This week I hope to finish up review and mods for all the legal stuff: wills, medical directives, powers of attorney, etc. It will be nice to be done with this set of stuff that’s such a stark reminder of my mortality.

Reality

My wife and I meet with the “terminal illness” psychologist today. This was the hard reality session. He makes the point that there is an average time to death for my disease, and we should make plans with that in mind. Of course we should hope for the best, but don’t assume it. He stresses the need for wills, medical directives, powers of attorney, etc. Fortunately, we did that years ago, but decide we should review and update as necessary. He encourages us/me to come back to discuss what we/I plan to do in the time remaining to have purpose. Probably because of the ongoing nausea and heartburn, I need a break. My wife sees this and we decide to postpone any sessions for the time being.