Advance health-care planning

Rule No. 1: We’re all going to die.

Rule No. 2: We can’t do anything to change Rule No. 1.

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Given Rule No. 1, it would be a good idea to do some advance planning for the end of our lives, particularly how we might want to direct our medical care in the final phase before death.

Granted, it’s an emotionally painful subject. It’s not something we want to face. But we might spare ourselves and our loved ones unnecessary anguish and even physical suffering if we make our wishes known in advance.

That’s where Utah’s excellent "Tool Kit for Advance Health Care Planning" comes in. It’s available from the University of Utah’s Center on Aging at aging.utah.edu/directives. Or you can write to U. Center on Aging, 10 S. 2000 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84112-5880. The phone is (801) 585-6361.

The tool kit is a set of forms and talking points that helps you decide and communicate your wishes about your care under different circumstances. However, the first thing you will learn is that you need to appoint someone to be your health-care agent, the person you want to speak for you in a medical crisis if you are unable to speak for yourself. That probably is a spouse, child or other family member, but it could be someone else.

Once you decide on that agent and he or she agrees to do the job, the two of you work through the rest of the tool kit together. It’s as much a question of ongoing communication as it is of filling out forms, which alone cannot make all of your wishes known or anticipate every eventuality.

Since anyone can face a medical emergency at any age, it makes sense for everyone over the age of 18 to work through the tool kit.

We bring up this painful subject because of a story in last Sunday’s Tribune about difficult choices at life’s end and whether Utah law allows people with terminal illnesses to choose to stop eating and drinking while receiving comfort care. It’s a complicated question that depends in part on the circumstances of the patient and how that person may have communicated his or her wishes. Is the patient mentally lucid? Is the patient suffering from depression?

We believe that Utah should afford a mentally competent person who is terminally ill the right to stop eating and drinking while receiving comfort care. But we also believe that vulnerable people must be protected.

While Utah continues to debate end-of-life issues, we should all get to work on our advance health-care planning tool kits.