The five wishes
As you plan for your future, we feel like it is important to think about things as if the worst case scenario were to happen. As you probably already could guess, we feel it is important to have your wills, trusts, and health initiatives written out with a lawyer. But one thing that we have found is that if something were to happen unexpectedly and you found yourself in the hospital and people that you trust had to make tough decisions, it would be nice to have something a little more accessible, that is in easy to read format. That is where the Five Wishes come in.
“Five Wishes has become America’s most popular living will because it is written in everyday language and helps start and structure important conversations about care in times of serious illness.”
Although this kind of stuff is hard to face it is the most loving thing that you can do for your loved ones if something were to happen to you. Think about it from this perspective, what if someone that you love deeply were in a bad accident and you were in charge of the treatment they get, how they are cared for, and how long treatment is provided. Hopefully, they have given you a copy of their will so you could read what they want this time to be like, but what if they didn’t? How lost would you feel? If you have something like the Five Wishes then you have a general map to help you make these tough decisions because it was created by the person you are caring for.
We are going to start pushing all of our clients, young and old, to fill one of these out. Not only that but to give them to the people who would be making decisions on their behalf. As hard as these conversations are, they really do show other people that you care enough to have an uncommon conversation.
You can purchase The Five Wishes for $5.00 at www.agingwithdignity.org. The 5 questions that it will walk you through are:
- The Person I want to Make Care Decisions for Me When I Can’t
- The Kind of Medical Treatment I Want or Don’t Want
- How Comfortable I Want to Be
- How I want people to Treat Me
- What I Want My Loved Ones to Know
To have something like this in place will not only give you peace of mind, it will be comforting to the person in charge of the hard decisions if it were to come to that.