Our designate, if we are both incapacitated, knows our wishes (we discussed them AND wrote them down).

Sure I’ll take a chance for a week, but I do not want to be a useless cadaver for someone to stare at on machines, which is basically what you can be in certain circumstances. I know I have other family members who will not appreciate my wishes, but they are the EXACT reason why I stated what I want. They’d do whatever they wanted just for appearances, which is not my thing.

I had an elderly relative die a few years ago after being in an accident. His family thought he was getting better, then he went downhill and they said there was no way to save him and he needed a PEG. They refused and he died. I’ll never forget the wake, because his son was worried about this. I asked him, “Did you do what he wanted?” He told me yes. Then I told him, “You did what he wanted you to do–you fulfilled his wishes and let people know them so he could die in peace. That is a wonderful gift.”

If needed, I hope someone can do the same for me.

The question is, when it comes to my wife, would I be able to follow a DNR? Or would I revoke it? I really don’t know the answer to that, and God willing I will never find out.

Perhaps this is just an illustration of my own selfishness. I don’t want to live through excruciating pain, or the humiliation of needing someone else to bath and/or do peri-care on me when I can no longer do it myself. Yet, I do not want to lose my wife for any reason. She is part of my soul and I could not face life without her.

some of the problem i think is the docs, which is something you never mentioned in your post. they need to step up to the plate and paint a real picture to families of what will or will never happen. if they ask me, i am always willing to discuss the issue with the family to assess where they stand and what they want, which is a “chore” i believe many docs simply don’t address adequately or many i’ve seen give some glimmer of false hope. not all or most docs by any means, but there always seem to be those few who push it off onto nursing or social services.

recently we had a pt who was made a dnr literally hours before her death because her husband was not only under the impression that her “brain cells would re-grow” even though she had a recurrance of brain cancer that had metz’ed everywhere, but he was by no means ready to let her go. he was even making arrangments to take her home to care for her the day of her death. my gripe the whole time was her doc only concentrated on the semi improvement of her initial presentation of pneumonia with the husband, never the total picture, which the nurses did discuss, but because “the word” never came from the doc, then what we said was automatically discarded. it was heart breaking for staff to see the suffering this pt and her family had. her husband went from planning home care arrangements to planning her funeral. that is why i will always be a dnr.