actthreedotnet

My column from last Sunday’s paper…

A living will is one of those documents you don’t usually think about until circumstances force you to, and then its piercing questions cut straight to the meaning of life.

How hard, and at what price, do you want the medical system to work to keep you alive? Therefore, what does it mean to be alive? This is not light Sunday morning reading, to be sure. For me, the living will took most of a Sunday afternoon to labor through on behalf of my elderly father, whose health just took a turn for the worse.

The first question asked whether he wanted CPR to be administered. He’s always said that if there’s a breath, there’s hope, so I guessed he’d say yes. But now I read that risks of CPR, particularly in the elderly, include broken ribs — one of which could puncture his lung and require mechanical intervention and a chest tube. He could also suffer brain damage because of less oxygen to the brain, and vomiting that might cause pneumonia if it aspirates into his lungs. Really? Call me naive but I had no idea, and, as it turns out, neither did he. In other words, he could be sicker than when he started.

Of course, the alternative is death. So there lies the question: How alive is alive?

Many physicians spend their days saving lives yet would not want heroic intervention for themselves; they well understand that it’s often futile and, worse, imposes suffering on the patient. Dr. Ken Murray writes about quality of life vs. its length in his poignant blog called “How Doctors Die.” (http://bit.ly/LP2d7g)

So many people wind down their lives in an ICU attached to tubes because traumatized family members tell doctors to do everything possible. They’re expecting a chance for the patient to resume a normal life again. Often that doesn’t happen; the patient may live, but not the life they knew. Family doesn’t realize, nor are they usually told, what’s reasonable to expect. And in the process, tens of thousands of dollars are spent every day.

As a hospice volunteer, I witness the process of dying each week. Patients experience their final days receiving compassionate care that minimizes pain and offers emotional, social and spiritual support. It’s usually not death that people fear, but rather pain and social isolation. Facing the end, people realize that it’s relationships that matter and spending time with loved ones takes priority. A book by Dr. Ira Byock summarizes four things he found matter most to a dying person: “Please forgive me. I forgive you. Thank you. I love you.”

Author and philosopher Joseph Campbell says that the real search isn’t for the meaning of life so much as for the experience of being alive. Nobody wants to end their days wishing I had, or hadn’t — we all want to live significantly and feel we’re making contributions of some kind to the planet and each other. We want our lives to have meaning until our last breath.

One of my favorite reads is by Rodney Smith, whose book “Lessons From the Dying” is, despite the title, more about living. During his hospice career Smith gleaned insights about what’s important in life. There are gems throughout this work, but his summary point might be, “It helps to live with the end in sight.” Each day matters, and living it consciously is a choice we’re all empowered to make.

Everyone is going to die. The question is how do we want to live and at what cost?