#advanced directives

[feminist-space]

"if you live in any of the nine states that automatically toss out a pregnant person’s advance directive:

Alabama

Indiana

Kansas

Michigan

Missouri

South Carolina

Texas

Utah

Wisconsin

But that’s not the complete story. A 2019 study published in JAMA examined the way all states navigated pregnancy and advance directives and found that 39 states “identified pregnancy as a condition that influences either an incapacitated [patient’s] advance directive or surrogate decision making.”

They also noted some of the nuances that vary between states: which states test for pregnancy before they allow someone to be taken off life support (Alaska, Georgia and Oklahoma); the five states (Kentucky, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota) that “specified that life-sustaining therapies may be discontinued if they cause the woman undue pain that cannot be alleviated by medication” and the lone state (Pennsylvania) that offers to take on the financial burden of keeping a pregnant person on life support in these situations.

Yet, among these states, the actual laws are hardly public knowledge — only eight of the states’ advance directive documents seek someone’s “pregnancy-specific care preferences.” Of the 31 states that had restrictions on taking pregnant people off life support, 29 of these states have restrictions in their state statutes. However, 69% of the advance directive forms from these states made no mention of them."

...

Ultimately, it comes back to a prevailing narrative that reproductive health care experts and advocates have been urging more Americans to consider: These sort of restrictive laws, pieced together by people with little knowledge of medicine or pregnant bodies cannot fairly legislate around the unique medical needs of pregnant people and the health care providers who care for them."

[arctic-hands]

So like I'm not an official member of the Order Of The Good Death, but I am death positive (PLEASE read up on that instead of being alarmed) but I'm completely overwhelmed by the info packet on making an advanced directive the hospital keeps pushing on me since the pandemic started (at least, that's what I'm hoping the reason is and not them anticipating some eugenicist crap befalling us soon). It's not even anxiety over my mortality–tho against my will there is that, I will not lie–I just don't know where to start. I start reading the packet they gave me and my eyes just glaze over.

My parents are in no way mentally equipped for conversations for everyone's eventual death, not theirs and least of all mine, so I can't ask them for help.

[goodiecornbread]

Wait, your corpse can be used to solve crimes?

Yes!

Body farms are used for forensic studies of body decomposition. They put the [donated] bodies in all sorts of situations-- buried in a plastic bag under 3 feet of dirt, left in a swamp, etc. Then they get studied as they decompose. That way, when a body is found out in the world, experts can look at it and know, "Oh, this person was left here for six days."

So my corpse wouldn't necessarily be directly solving a crime (unfortunately), but it would help forensic investigators in their... forensic investigating.

The University of Tennesee has the most famous farm, but there are many

[seniorindependence]

National Healthcare Decisions Day

April 16 is recognized as National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD).  This day exists to inspire, educate and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning. This day doesn’t exactly sound like a day of celebration with streamers and party horns, but it is a day to highlight a very important subject.  Do you and/or your loved ones have an advance care directive?

A healthcare advance directive is a legal written document that can be completed by all adults at any age or stage of health.  Health care advance directive is a term that refers to a person’s spoken and written instructions about future medical care and treatment, including but not limited to, instructions regarding your preferences or desires concerning any aspect of your health care, communicating your preferences for life-prolonging and palliative care procedures and a living will declaration or an anatomical gift made in accordance with your state’s law.  By stating your health care choices in an advance directive, you are helping your family and physician understand your wishes about your medical care.

By creating an advance directive ahead of when the need arises, provides YOU time to think through what is important to you, gives YOU time to explore your options as well as gives YOU the say in what medical care you will receive.  Having this document relinquishes the stress from your spouse, children, siblings or any loved one from having to make hard decisions when they are already in the middle of managing whatever healthcare crisis that might be dictating the need for such decisions. 

In recognition of this designated day, the question must be asked. Do you have advanced directives?  Have you talked to and shared your final wishes with your spouse, children and/or siblings? If you answered “no” to any of these, please let this be the reminder that now is the time to address this important topic.

[momlovesyoubest]

End of Life-When Do You Facilitation?

Therapist Why do some families need facilitation of a family meeting at the end of life? With the help of a neutral third-party facilitator, families work together to resolve their differences or solve a problem they could not address satisfactorily without help. Find out more in my newest free Webinar on February 25th 2005 These family differences especially happen to dysfunctional families but…

[missewoodhouse]

Fun facts: We already have a tool that does this. It’s called writing a fucking Living Will!

Which is a thing that everyone should be doing. Seriously. I know it sounds depressing and morbid as fuck.

Do it anyway.

Really. Yes, you!

Because this article may propose an AI hellscape vision in which we trust an algorithm to make some of the hardest decisions we will ever task our loved ones with. But we do essentially ask our loved ones to go back through their memories of our medical decisions and all the conversations we’ve ever had. And use that data to make those hard decisions. And carry the doubt of whether or not they’re the same ones that we ourselves would have made.

And the thing is, we can make that easier! Not by outsourcing the job to our algorithmic overlords, but by writing down a list that answers questions about what we would want our loved ones to do!

FINALLY your shitposts can decide whether you live or die “The tool hasn’t been built yet. But Wendler plans to train it on a person’s own medical data, personal messages, and social media posts. He hopes it could not only be more accurate at working out what the patient would want, but also alleviate the stress and emotional burden of difficult decision-making for family members.”

[unofficialchronicle]

Advanced Directives Overview

TW: end of life care mentions. 

Eileen Spillane RN, NP, MA from https://www.befriendingdeath.com/ provides an overview of advanced directive terms. Understand the terminology through a run through with a welcoming, qualified professional. 

Types of Advance Directives

The living will.

Durable power of attorney for health care/Medical power of attorney.

POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment)

Do not resuscitate (DNR) orders.

Organ and tissue donation.

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJdD-1t4wis (~20 min watch)

[melonkittii]

im replaying the sumeru quest on my second account and i can physically feel the worms crawling back into my head

[thepatchycat]

*GUNDAMs your clones*

[havegaysex]

general PSA

I highly recommend looking into it and seeing if the government you live under (state government for those of us in the United States) has laws surrounding advanced directives.

In some places they even respect psychiatric advance directives and you can put things like treatments you do not consent to and things they should do before isolating and restraining you, the psychiatric advance directive I found for my state in Colorado even has things like sections for you to put where things they can do that will make you feel safer or more unsafe. It had fields for facilities you do not want to go to.

Advanced directives are a legal document you do have to get them notarized and check and make sure they're up to date every few years because laws do change and sometimes laws can make your old advance directive no longer valid. Many governments do not have laws that enforce the use so they aren't helpful everywhere but it's worth looking into more and more states are recognizing them.

going to the psych ward is not a “grippy sock vacation” I know you think ur hilarious but don’t call it that :)

[trans-axolotl]

Bazelon Center (one of the few anti-institutionalization law centers that does Olmstead litigation) giving an award to a zionist politician (John Fetterman) is so fucking enraging and also really showcases how the nonprofit disability world is actually exploitative and dangerous in so many ways.

if you also feel pissed off that a "mental health law advocacy" group that supposedly cares about civil rights for disabled people is honoring a genocidal politician this Tuesday, feel free to comment on their instagram and also email communications@bazelon.org and let them know how you feel!

Sample email script:

"I am deeply disappointed/enraged/heartbroken/etc about your choice to honor Senator John Fetterman with the 2024 Congressional Champion award. Fetterman's has publicly refused to call for a ceasefire and continues to support the ongoing genocide, frequently making racist and inflammatory public comments. As an organization that claims to value civil rights and equality for all disabled people, it is shameful that you refuse to act in solidarity with disabled Palestinians, instead choosing to award a politician who is celebrating genocide. I demand that you retract the award from Fetterman and do not honor a genocidal politician this Tuesday."

If you can, changing up the wording to make it your own would be best.

Key points for commenting/emailing:

Express your rage/sadness that they are honoring John Fetterman.

Explain that Fetterman openly supports genocide.

Demand that they retract the award.

as mad/disabled/mentally ill people, we have a responsibility to call out our community organizations when they do bullshit like this and to actively act in solidarity!

please share, comment, and email!

[violent138]

Bruce definitely considers all the head injuries and missed nights of sleep and perpetually tests himself for signs of cognitive failure or memory loss. Alfred gets so freaked out by Bruce's insane fixations on losing control or losing his mind to a neurodegenerative disease because he fears that Bruce would do something rash without consulting anyone. To the point that Alfred and Leslie separately agree to Bruce that they'd handle it if that happened to him.

Bruce agrees, but privately doesn't trust at all that they'd be capable or actually do it. So instead he calls Dick and Jason to explain his version of an advanced directive. They're a mix of utterly unsurprised, exasperated and Jason laughs right at him. But they both agree after Bruce's repeated pressuring and leave in the middle of his half-assed apology to get take out and then joke about how it's actually one of the more normal things Bruce's asked of them before getting drunk.

[killed-by-choice]

Note: Despite social media posts claiming otherwise, Adriana is being kept on life support not because of Georgia’s abortion ban but because of the 2007 state law that protects the patient’s wishes. It’s the Georgia Advance Directive for Health Care Act. Since 2007, removing a pregnant woman from life support has not been legal in Georgia unless the patient had an advance directive that states her wishes to be withdrawn from life-sustaining measures in those circumstances. Roe v. Wade was still in effect when this act was passed. Adriana could have chosen to put that order in place at any time but chose not to. Killing her child against her wishes would be blatantly illegal because of the Advance Directive Act.

Also, obviously there’s no reason to kill her child when he could be saved. To help their grieving family cover hospital bills, here’s a fundraiser for them organized by a Pro-Life charity. No matter what your views on abortion or on the Advance Directive Act are, I hope you consider donating to help. Thank you for reading.

[rustbeltjessie]

I haven’t made a pinned post in a while, but since it’s my birthday month and I’m struggling right now, I figured it’s a good time to make one.

First, let me introduce myself. I’m Jessie Lynn McMains, aka Rust Belt Jessie. I’m a writer (poetry and prose), artist, zine-maker, spoken word performer, occasional musician, small press publisher, and general jack of several creative trades. I’m queer—bi/mspec and nonbinary (I use they/them, she/her, and he/him pronouns). I’m disabled and neurodivergent, and the parent of two kiddos. Politically? Well, I consider myself an anarchist at heart, but I still vote in every election. I think everyone should be able to have enough food, and a safe place to live, and yeah, even a few ‘unnecessary,’ fun things, just by virtue of being alive. As for the rest of my beliefs, you can probably garner a general idea if you peruse my blog even a little.

Now, onto the nitty-gritty. We had about ten days between when our last month’s food money ran out and when this month’s came in. It has been refilled as of today, so I don’t have to worry about that for the moment, but because of that gap, I had to spend money I’d set aside for other stuff on food. I paid our rent and energy bill for the month, but I’m a couple months overdue on our Internet bill, and I don’t want to risk that getting shut off. And then, well, it’s December. I’m trying to buy my kids some Christmas presents, and it’s not just my birthday month—my youngest kiddo’s birthday is four days before Christmas. Because of all this, I’m also way behind on writing stuff. I owe my zine subscribers a new issue (I didn’t send anything at all in November), and I’m trying to finish up some pieces to record for my new spoken word EP, but I’ve had to focus on day job and side-hustle stuff that’s more immediately lucrative, so I haven’t been able to dedicate much time to finishing these projects.

If you’d like to throw some $$ my way so I can get some gifts for my kiddos, keep my Internet on, get back to my writing, and maybe have a less-stressful birthday month than I did last year, I have V*nmo (JessieLynnMcMains) and P*yp*l (coeur.de.fantome [at] gmail[dot]com).

But hey, hey, I’m not just asking for something for nothing! I have a lot of stuff available on Ko-fi (rustbeltjessie), including print books and zines, ebooks and zines, and pins, and you can also hire me as an editor or commission a custom mini-collage. And almost everything is sliding scale/pay-what-you-can, some with a minimum price, others starting at $0.

And that zine subscription? It’s still not too late to get in on it, even though the year is almost over. If you sign up now, you’ll receive all previous issues, along with this month’s when it’s finished, and the final two will be mailed out in January.

Or perhaps you’d like to buy or commission something I don’t officially have for sale. Maybe you’d like to buy one of my existing pieces of art? Or commission a custom pin, designed by me, based on the band/film/fandom/whatever of your choice? Or commission a custom postcard poem/art piece, on the subject of your choice? Or have me write you a custom mini-zine, on the subject of your choice? I can do all those things! DM me, and we��ll work something out!

Oh, and I mentioned above that I was working on a new spoken word EP? Go check out my full-length spoken word album, Self-Portrait With Ghosts and Trains, which was released by Hello America Stereo Cassette in July 2021. You can find it at helloamerica.bandcamp.com. (I do get royalties from that release periodically, but it’s not as immediate as if you purchase something directly from me.)

All that said, I know times are tough for most people right now, so please don’t feel obligated to purchase anything or otherwise send money my way. And, as always, even just a few dollars helps, as does reblogging/boosting this post. 🖤

[lestats-ovaries]

been thinking about how ambrosius is largely shown commanding and acting as a leader to the knights for most of the movie, especially in the movie's climax. I also keep thinking about how he graduated at the same time as bal, and the time jump between then and the rest of the plot can't be longer than a few months.

all this to say that chances are, ambrosius was immediately forced into a position of leadership on account of his lineage, which puts his internal rant to the director in a whole new light

[marlynnofmany]

I've been reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy stories lately, by a lot of different authors, and I've noticed an interesting trend. Not something that happens all the time by any means, but something that's more likely to happen in one over the other.

Magic fixes problems while science causes problems.

And it makes sense that it would be that way, because magic is something that we don't really have, and we can only imagine what we would do with it if we did. Magic is just altering reality in ways that logically shouldn't happen, given our current understanding of physics. If we could change reality with a snap of our fingers, oh man we would do so much good with it.

But science. We've seen what science can do. And before it can achieve the lofty goals that it sets out to do, it goes through any number of failures and setbacks. We've seen the mistakes. We've suffered through them. Then in fiction, we extrapolate what could happen with advancements that we haven't quite reached yet.

With science fiction, we tell cautionary tales of a that future could be. With fantasy, we tell fairy tales of a past that never was.

Not every time. But often enough to notice.