This is the advice that nobody wants to hear but everybody should heed. Let’s talk about end of life issues. If your loved one suddenly has a medical crisis, would you know how to find their important information?
MEDICAL ORGANIZERS
Like most people, I didn’t think about this until there was an emergency – or three. In 2006 and 2007, my parents made a combined three trips to the emergency room via ambulance. Each time, the paramedics asked me questions I couldn’t answer. It was frustrating, stressful, and scary.
That’s why I paid attention when I read about a Hawaii woman who put together a new book to help people prepare for just this kind of situation. Sandi Yorong created the The Lifetime Medical Organizer: A Simple Guide to Organizing Matters of Life and Health. How-To Instructions and Forms Included after a similarly stressful experience with a sick parent.
Co-written with Richard Schuttler, Ph.D, it's got a dozen forms, and instructions on how to use them. “You're created it for yourself. If you couldn't speak tomorrow, this would speak for you. Everyone would know what you wanted, what medications you're on, what allergies you have,” Yorong says.
The idea is to fill out these forms now, and save a lot of stress down the line. Yorong explained that necessity was the mother of this invention. In this case, her dad fell ill. "I did it for my family because we needed a resource to communicate with everyone involved. It eliminated the emotion and just focused on the logic and consistency of information.”
She continues, “When you have family calling and wanting updates, coming to the hospital visiting, it’s hard. My dad had five doctors, and all of them gave us updates and new prognosis. Or hospital staff changes shifts, and sometimes you have to repeat the information over and over.”
After the book debuted in the summer of 2008, it became Barnes & Nobles Hawaii's best selling non-fiction book. It has a personal introduction and some simple forms, like Personal Contacts, Emergency Contacts, Medicine Prescription Record, and Family Medical History.
I can totally see why it’s so popular. Take my own experience with my dad’s diabetic coma. My mother didn’t recognize the symptoms right away and finally asked me over to look at him. When I got to their house and saw his condition, I called EMS.
Paramedics kept asking to speak to my mother to find out about my dad’s prescription medications. She freezes in a panic, and on this night, tried to avoid us and shuffle papers mindlessly. She kept saying she was looking for Dad’s medical card. I was at a loss. After several attempts at calling her into the bedroom I finally had to take her hand and walk her into the room.
Yorong says this is typical – and exactly why so many people should organize their medical information. “People take for granted that the person who knows all your medical information will be with you at the hospital and can share it, but people react differently under stress or highly emotional situations. They panic, they can't remember, they have fear, they get disoriented, they can't remember where it's located. You just want to prepare yourself. “
The book is not intimidating, and it is easy to use. Yorong says, “Take something as basic as an emergency telephone directory. Most elderly people don't store the information on a cell phone. It might be on their fridge, but the names might not be listed in any particular order.”
The period in which my parents were having all these big medical issues was hard for me because I was extremely tired and preoccupied from pregnancy, and then having the baby. And a massive, year-and-a-half remodeling project of the entire house and yard.
They avoided dealing with this, so when I finally got some rest after the baby turned a year old, I cycled this up to top priority. It was frustrating because I felt I already had one person to take care of. I really can’t handle another two.
Nonetheless, being an only child, I know the responsibility will fall to me, so in an effort to save myself the stress down the line, I got two books for my parents. Having them fill it out was another issue entirely, because a lot of people don’t like talking about their own mortality, including them.
My mother shuts down. My father freaks out. But Yorong says to persist. “Thirteen billion adult kids in country today are involved in some level of caretaking of their parents. Adult kids have to confront this issue with their parents sooner or later.” After some headaches and fights, the books got filled out. They now sit in my house – with a duplicate copy in their house.
I have no idea what’s going to happen to my parents’ health in the future, and that’s something that can give me anxiety if I think too much about it. But at least having their medical information on paper makes me feel like I have a slight bit of control over what could end up being a scary time.
Additionally, it’s something I decided I needed, not only for my parents, but for me and my husband. I know we’re kind of young to be doing this, but then again, Claus and I both work in fields that constantly remind us of the frailty of life. As Yorong puts it, “You're really doing it for the love of your family and to help them, and to represent yourself if you can't represent yourself in some manner.”
www.lifemedorganizer.com
WILLS AND TRUSTS
If you have a child, substantial property, or both, you should sit down with a lawyer to plan your estate. Period. We have both (if you consider one house “substantial” – and gosh, with the price of Hawaii real estate, I do!) and shortly after the birth of our first (and so far, only) child, we did. A friend highly recommended me to Donald Wong, Esq.
“Planning for your estate is necessary for several simple reasons: (1) The right people will inherit in the right manner and at the right time; (2) You will avoid unnecessary court procedures and delays if your estate is planned properly; (3) Your medical needs and desires will be handled efficiently and properly with the right documentation; (4) The possibility of family fights or tension will be greatly reduced if everything has been properly documented and executed,” he sums up.
“You do not have to be rich in order to get your estate planning in order. For example, parents of a small child need proper documents to make sure that the child has the proper guardian if they die, so that the child's assets are protected and properly managed. Those are important concerns for any family, rich, poor, or in between,” explains Wong.
The first appointment took an hour. He explained to both of us estate law and outlined our various options for setting up a trust. Frankly, I am bad with numbers and tax-talk to begin with (a communications major partly by default, as so many reporters are!), and I was especially fuzzy-headed because the baby was young and I wasn’t getting much sleep. I absorbed most of it but I lost my focus towards the end, so Claus had to re-explain stuff afterwards.
We were sent home to think about our options and select a plan. We had to think about things like who would take care of Olivia if we died. We also had to find all our financial documents for when we returned.
Our second visit was also about an hour, but it involved signing a lot of papers in front of two witnesses. We got a binder that is about three inches thick to take home. And we got homework! We had to make sure to transfer all our assets into the name of the trust. If we didn’t do that, it would be the same as not having a trust. If I died without transferring, say, my bank account into the trust’s name, those assets would be taxed and held in probate court. It would be the same as if I never made a trust.
How do you know what assets to transfer into the trust, and how to do it? You have to… aack… read the binder. Yes, the word “homework” is applicable. It is a pain, and it took me almost a year to do mine. Not because I have so much in assets, but because of a combination of procrastination, no time, no energy, and then doing it wrong a couple of times. I have not yet done my husband’s. That’s right, it’s “wife-as-secretary.”
But I know it needs to get done. Wong says, “Making sure that you follow instructions to fund the trust, to change beneficiaries, to make sure that all assets are accounted for, is absolutely necessary to insure that the estate procedure is as efficient and inexpensive to the family when someone passes away or becomes incapacitated.”
I feel this is necessary to tell you about, because when I’ve shared it with my closest friends, they had no idea what the process entailed. As Paul put it when he actually saw the binder, “Oh wow, I thought a will was just a few pages long. I had no idea it was so detailed.” And Val was overwhelmed and surprised by my description of the process. “I thought they draw it up and it’s done,” she said.
Wong reveals, “We have seen over the past decade, increasing battles within families over inheritances and management issues. Proper documents will not necessarily avoid all fights, but having them sure reduces the possibility of a fight. Doing nothing, or not having up to date documents, generally will cause problems like a court battle, or lingering family hatred because someone took advantage of Mom or Dad, or that something promised to a child was never properly given.”
It is not cheap; it cost us a few thousand dollars, in addition to all this time and energy. I’m sure there are do-it-yourself forms on the internet or in the self-help section, but that’s not my style. I’m too lazy to read up on how to prepare my own forms.
Maybe that’s a good thing? Wong’s take is, “Doing documents yourself is not recommended. The worse cases that I have had in court have been over documents drafted by individuals for themselves. The only persons who came out ahead were the attorneys who were involved in trying to resolve the mess.”
Though we’re kind of wrapping it up for the present, it’s never really a done deal, says Wong. “You will still need to update periodically to make sure everything is still applicable, but if an emergency does occur, you are now prepared. Your estate plan will insure that your estate will be organized and the estate will be managed and handled as you wished, and not subject to chance.”
It’s monotonous and frustrating to do, but I feel good that I’ve earned a little peace of mind- at least for now.
Oceanic Time Warner Cable's Community Website
