A Durable Power Of Attorney For Health Care Decisions Is A Good Thing To Have In Place

In the summer of 2009, my father was vacationing in Reno, Nevada and had a heart attack.  He’d had one twenty years before and this time the doctor told him he needed quadruple bypass surgery.  Prior to his surgery (which had something like a 98% success rate), he was asked to fill out a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions which would state his wishes if things went south during surgery.

My dad’s heart surgeon assured us that it was a very common surgery, one he’d done many, many times.  My family, friends, my dad’s girlfriend and I were all quite relieved when my dad came through the surgery okay.   It took him some time to heal, and change his lifestyle, including eating habits.  It was a good thing we had the Durable Power of Attorney just in case, though we didn’t need it.

Unfortunately, a “just in case” situation happened a few months after that surgery when my dad went into cardiac arrest at a Cal football game in Berkeley, California.  He basically died for several minutes, but his heart started beating after CPR.  At the hospital, he was put into a medically induced coma to stabilize his body.  However, during the night, they discovered he was bleeding internally and the doctors needed to bring him out of the coma to see if he had any brain activity, and for possible surgery.

My sister was local and was at the hospital with other family members and close friends.  I flew in from Los Angeles, and my brother was on his way in from Dallas, where he was visiting his in-laws.  When I arrived at the hospital, my dad was still coming out of the coma, he was still bleeding internally, he was unresponsive, and the doctors didn’t see any brain activity.  It was a tense situation.  His nurse urged us to give it a bit of time, that my dad’s body was warming up.  I spoke with his surgeon who told my sister and me that he only had a 10% chance of surviving the surgery.  They thought he had an aortic aneurysm and anticipated he’d bleed out on the operating table.

Again, it was a very tense situation.  What should my sister and I do?  If my dad had no brain activity, why do the surgery?  Yet, there was a glimmer of hope with the 10%.    We knew from his Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions that my dad didn’t want any heroic measures.  Was surgery heroic?  Do we let him die?  How do you make a life or death decision like that?  For a brief moment, we contemplated not doing the surgery.   But, my sister and I wanted to wait for my brother because he was the primary on my dad’s Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions and this was a decision that needed to be made by the three of us.

As luck or fate or whatever would have it, my dad eventually responded, so we knew he wasn’t brain dead!  There was something going on inside him, even though he was still unconscious.  The nurse had been right in asking us to wait.  This miraculous response occurred just as my brother arrived at the hospital.  The three of us made a decision.  We honored my dad’s Durable Power of Attorney and decided that a 10% chance was not a heroic measure; it was a chance at life.  Thank God we took that chance because my dad is alive and healthy today.  He made it through the surgery (lacerated liver) and was in the hospital for nearly a month, but he made it!

In a time of crisis, extreme duress and stress, my brother, sister and I, using our dad’s Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions as a guide, were able to act as one in deciding our dad’s fate.  It was an exceedingly emotional and tough decision to make, whether you are one person or three.  It’s not something I’d wish for anyone to have to go through, yet incidents like this happen everyday.

Durable powers of attorney for health care decisions and advance healthcare directives are important documents because they express the wishes of the patient.  Having that piece of paper in place helped us.  There were no fights or disagreements on how to proceed.  We acted as a unit, as a family at a most important time.

This past November, my husband and I worked with my old law firm and drew up our wills, signed powers of attorney and advance healthcare directives, and created a living trust.  End of life planning.  Just writing that makes me squirm a bit.  I know I’m going to die someday, but executing those documents really brought it home.  It’s important to tackle this subject while we are still youngish, have our wits about us, and are not in crisis.

All of these documents are there to assist our family, mainly our son, should it become necessary.  Whenever and however we die, everything will be in place for an easy transition of our estate.  Should our Advance Healthcare Directives ever need to be used, I know my husband’s wishes and he knows mine.  As a parent, I feel like I owe it to my son to have these documents ready.  When we do finally die, that’ll be hard enough on him.  We’ll share this information with him when he’s at an age where he can handle the conversation (he’s only 2½ now).

I can’t help but wonder, if we didn’t have my dad’s Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care Decisions to act as our guide post, would the decision making process have run as smoothly as it did with my siblings?  Probably.  I’m grateful we didn’t have to find out.

Image: bossco (Raymong Shobe)