Carol Fisher-Linn
April 16 – Taxes are done. Now it’s decision making time.
Do the names Karen Ann Quinlan, Nancy Cruzan, and Terri Schiavo ring a bell?
Whew, you survived the rigors and trauma of April 15th, but before you put away all your important papers, April 16 annually serves as a reminder to make and review your long-range end-of-life healthcare decisions. National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) exists to inspire, educate, and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance-care planning.
As of June 2016, April 16 is a day to set up a conversation about the thing we all hate to talk about. Our end-of-life wishes. If you are like me, you plowed through piles of papers and files to find all the information you needed for your tax return work. Frustrating, wasn’t it? While that frustration is fresh in your mind, imagine your family or loved ones having their own frustration trying to find important papers, insurance policies, bill paying procedures, bank accounts, passwords, addresses, social media accounts (you can’t close a FB or My Ancestry account without a password and death certificate, for instance), phone numbers, etc., on top of perhaps the shock of an unexpected death, or even one that they all knew was imminent. As an end-of-life doula, I have found that people are generally inadequately prepared for the death of a loved one, or even themselves.
You may not want to talk or read about this, but the importance of advance care planning cannot be stressed enough. What’s nice about having a target date is you have it on your calendar and treat it as another task that needs to be checked off your To Do list. And, doing it annually helps you to keep things current. Personal situations may change; financial obligations or holdings may be different; people who were in your life a year ago may not be there anymore, while others may have taken their places. Priorities may change and hence, so will the end-of-life plans.
In 2008, the idea for this day came from such an attorney, Nathan Kottkamp, who worked in the health-care field. He developed the idea for the annual day “to provide clear, concise, and consistent information on values-based, healthcare decision-making for individuals, healthcare providers/facilities and community leaders through the widespread availability and dissemination of simple, free, and uniform tools (not just forms) to guide the process.” The post taxes day was chosen because of a Benjamin Franklin quote, “In this world, nothing is certain except death and taxes.” He wanted to normalize this process back-to-back as an annual thing to do to help recognize your own wishes and those of the people in your life. Kottamp saw this as a means to encourage ongoing conversations about people’s wishes for their end-of-life care, helping them to become comfortable expressing those wishes.
Throughout the United States the campaign has grown into a national series of community groups sponsoring the conversation: healthcare systems, legal services, book clubs, churches, schools, end-of-life doula presentations … in one way or another someone has brought the idea to a community. Hopefully, much of this health-care, end-of-life, financial planning care will be demystified, making the socially taboo accessible, approachable, and even palatable. People need to stop thinking that a will answers all the questions. It does not. If that is all that is left behind, it can indeed open a Pandora’s box of issues that next of kin don’t know how to resolve without your input. It all starts with the conversation.
No matter how old you are, you are invited to set aside April 16 as the date to have that conversation with someone important in your life. Don’t end up being any of those names mentioned in the beginning of this article. While you are at it, please consider bringing your doctors and lawyers on board with your plans. You may want to make a special appointment to discuss your plans with them, so the focus is entirely on the conversation. Please go to the NHDD’s website for a clearer view of why this day is a MUST for anyone who cares about those they leave behind: https://theconversationproject.org/nhdd/origins/ Or email them at nhdd@ihi.org with any questions. If you have questions for me, you can reach me at cfisherdoulaendoflife@gmail.com
This is important. Please, put it on your calendar and get started this year. You will also find many planning guides on Google. Just don’t be convinced you need to spend hundreds of dollars – you do not. Do it. Your survivors will thank you.