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She Signed a Living Will. Her Sister Didn’t Honor It.
WSJ via MSN ^ | Nov 30, 2024 | Ashlea Ebeling

Posted on 12/01/2024 3:25:52 AM PST by where's_the_Outrage?

fter getting diagnosed with a degenerative disease, high school principal Lynne Chesley signed a legal document stating she didn’t want her life to be extended by artificial means.

She ended up on a feeding tube anyway for more than three years while family members fought over her fate. Her wishes were honored after a ruling this year by the Oklahoma Supreme Court, and Chesley died in August.

Such a drawn-out case shows the stakes for getting the details right on a living will, including who is designated to fulfill the person’s wishes and how the information is shared with family and healthcare providers. While end-of-life planning decisions rarely go to court, the Oklahoma ruling strengthens the legality of the documents, lawyers said.......

When Chesley was hospitalized for pneumonia in 2021, a feeding tube was put in place. Her relatives fought over the advance directive she completed in 2013, which called for not using life-sustaining treatment. Her children argued that the advance directive should be enforced and the feeding tube removed.

Chesley’s designated proxy for healthcare decisions was her sister Amy Meyer, according to court filings. When the moment came, she argued that Chesley didn’t want the tube removed.

The sister declined to comment, her lawyer said. In a deposition taken in a related case over spending money out of Chesley’s trust, she said, “I don’t believe in killing someone before they are ready to die.”

Meyer argued that her sister revoked her signed directive by making limited movements after being told that removing the tube would be painful. She couldn’t speak or walk at the time. Her doctor said he could administer medicine to ease any pain.

(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...


TOPICS: Chit/Chat; Health/Medicine; Religion; Society
KEYWORDS: dnr; lifesupport; livingwill; qualityoflife
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I often tell my wife and daughter that if I'm bedridden just let me die, and have that specified our will package.

What can go wrong? In my case I'm worth more alive than dead as my monthly income would be cut in half to the wife.

1 posted on 12/01/2024 3:25:52 AM PST by where's_the_Outrage?
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

There are probably people like you, where their families put their recently deceased into the freezer and never informed the state to keep the cheques coming.


2 posted on 12/01/2024 3:31:45 AM PST by Jonty30 (Genghis Khan did not have the most descendants. His father had more. )
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To: Jonty30
The company I worked for once had a retiree who died and his surviving wife was receiving a small survivor pension.

We discovered that she had died three years prior and the sister she was living with continued to cash her survivor pension checks.

3 posted on 12/01/2024 3:46:45 AM PST by Hot Tabasco
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To: Jonty30

“There are probably people like you, where their families put their recently deceased into the freezer and never informed the state to keep the cheques coming.”

Hmmm, interesting...


4 posted on 12/01/2024 3:46:55 AM PST by Clutch Martin ("The dawn cracks hard like a bull whip and it ain't taking no lip from the night before" Tom Waits)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

What can go wrong? In my case I’m worth more alive than dead as my monthly income would be cut in half to the wife.

Which is generally the case when the male has been the primary provider. There are generally also huge tax consequence for the surviving spouse, with now half the income or less and depending on age may need more income to survive at the level to which she is accustomed.

Taxes are legal Government theft to begin with and I would be willing to have widows exempt from future taxes if over 65. The cost of living does not get automatically cut in half when a spouse dies. She pays taxes and fees for housing transportation, etc. as if the other half was still alive.


5 posted on 12/01/2024 3:49:45 AM PST by wita (Under oath since 1966 in defense of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness)
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To: Hot Tabasco

Judging by the true crime things I watch and read, that seems to happen a lot.


6 posted on 12/01/2024 3:50:26 AM PST by MayflowerMadam (It's hard not to celebrate the fall of bad people. - Bongino)
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To: Clutch Martin

My brokerage didn’t require signatures on deposited checks.

Until they suddenly, emphatically DID...!


7 posted on 12/01/2024 3:51:53 AM PST by Does so (♭♫♪ Are ye able said the Master to be crucified with me? ♫♬♪...🇺🇦...Dem☭¢rat...≣)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

All I have is my two kids, and they both know to let me go.


8 posted on 12/01/2024 3:55:44 AM PST by roving (Deplorable MAGA Garbage )
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To: where's_the_Outrage?
I wrote about this previously. Spelling things out is part of the job. The other part is situational awareness, and that there are LOTS of people all-too willing to euthanize under the banner of “mercy.”.

A good friend's father was hospitalized a few years ago with a heart attack and hooked up to machines. The attending doctor didn't think the old man would make it.

My friend, respecting Dad's wishes to not be on machines, signed a paper approving the de-machining and putting the Dad on "comfort care" which (IN GENERAL) is basically no curative care.

That was ok - that was the Dad's wishes.

The old man pulled through, but the hospital refused to put Dad back on fluids or nutrition because - you guessed it - "comfort care" IN THAT HOSPITAL and for THAT DOCTOR is effectively Terri Schaivo-style starvation and dehydration.

They said, food and water was a medical treatment and thus "curative" and AGAINST the rules of "comfort care."

My friend was stunned. And the attending and her team wouldn't budge - ”you signed the document giving consent.”

For the next few days, my friend and siblings heard from scores of nurses etc that withholding fluids was effectively "the right thing to do"....very Terri Schaivo-like. They also threw in “Dad live a good long life” and “he will never come back the way he was.”

It took a virtual miracle whereby a different doctor intervened, said the father clearly wasn't terminal, and put the old man back on nutrition and fluids.

While my friend's Dad passed away peacefully in his sleep a few weeks later, it was on the Dad’s terms.

It’s also worth noting that the siblings were split on “comfort care.” There WAS a view that it was ok for Dad to dehydrate to death. Someone even said that dehydration is painless; I hear the total opposite during the Schaivo murder.

Euthanasia is, technically, illegal. And I know many people would be OK if fluids were withheld when it is THEIR time to go. Fair enough.

But euthanasia can be made legal if you're not careful with the Fine Print or vetting the "mercy killing" mindset of the attending.

9 posted on 12/01/2024 4:06:57 AM PST by DoodleBob (Gravity's waiting period is about 9.8 m/s² )
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

“In my case I’m worth more alive than dead”

I was going to ask you if I was in the will, but now just forget it.


10 posted on 12/01/2024 4:30:22 AM PST by lowbridge ("Let’s check with Senator Schumer before we run it" - NY Times)
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To: DoodleBob

We were just in a situation where my mom was in the hospital for a gallbladder removal. She is 92. She had the operation and subsequently got some kind of infection along with retaining water. Hospital at some point ordered nothing by mouth for TWO DAYS while the idiots debated whether it was safe to do a needle procedure to drain water from her abdomen, ultimately deciding it was not safe.

Then wouldn’t switch her diet back to normal food, keeping her on liquids only for a couple days, then told us she needed a feeding tube because “she was starving.” Which, if so, the hospital had contributed to! We said no feeding tube and started bringing in our own gourmet food, since everyone knows hospital food sucks.

Doctor was livid we wouldn’t do a feeding tube and said we were contributing to mom’s death and she (doctor was female) would discharge mom to home hospice. We said fine. This was a two week ordeal.

Mom has now been home for maybe six weeks in care of my sister and is doing better, was not ever “starving” and we are still mystified about this feeding tube recommendation. Anyway, so glad we got her out of the hospital. And yes, doctors think that, at a certain age, it’s been long enough and you might as well drop dead.


11 posted on 12/01/2024 5:08:22 AM PST by yldstrk
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To: yldstrk

This is almost identical to what happened to a close relative. The hospital caused the problem and were alerted with plenty of time to intervene, but just upped the pain med, which covered over the damage now happening, until they realized the insistent pain was real and from their prior drug inducing a rip through the colon.

Same basic age, too.

It just sickens me.


12 posted on 12/01/2024 5:32:11 AM PST by ConservativeMind (Trump: Befuddling Democrats, Republicans, and the Media for the benefit of the US and all mankind.)
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To: ConservativeMind

Good lord.


13 posted on 12/01/2024 5:40:26 AM PST by yldstrk
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To: ConservativeMind

People have to monitor their own medical treatments. Always have the temerity to tell the doctors to FO.


14 posted on 12/01/2024 5:51:21 AM PST by healy61 (.)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

My wife told me that she didn’t want to live as a vegetable, however the decision in her living will is up to me.

She further added that she has a very lucrative long term home nursing care policy that would pay me very well if I cared for her in our home. She clarified that if it was financially very beneficial to keep her alive, that was OK.

I responded that I’m sure I could find a cute young live in nurse to help me care for her.

I fully expect my demise will precede her death!

😁


15 posted on 12/01/2024 5:57:45 AM PST by tired&retired (Blessings )
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

People get weird when a family member dies.....seen it many times.

Case in point, my wife’s estranged father (his choice) passes away 3 years before my wife knew about it.

He didn’t have a will and my wife being the only child, by our state law she was rightful air to his estate so we started looking into it and discovered sometime in those 3 years my wife’s aunt (her father’s sister) that used to babysit my wife when she was little took it upon herself to probate the estate in her name.

Her aunt knew full well of my wife’s existence and still......during the time the aunt had possession of the estate a hurricane blew through and dropped an oak tree on the father’s house which was a total loss, the aunt technically but illegally owned the home but failed to procure homeowners insurance.

We finally got the probate put in my wife’s name but right after that the city began to slap Leins on the property because of the condition the house was in.

We retained our own probate attorney and in telling the whole story (I haven’t done it here) they were in disbelief to the point when we got home from that initial consultation they called us back to make sure we were sure our situation was accurate.

It took them between 2 and 3 years to get that mess straightened out and we more than likely never did get all my wife’s father’s possessions back from the aunt.

Like I said, this story only scratches the surface on all the details.

So yeah, people get weird when a family member dies.


16 posted on 12/01/2024 6:13:26 AM PST by V_TWIN (America...so great even the people that hate it refuse to leave!)
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To: where's_the_Outrage?

My ex-husband and I had this issue with his mother Evelyn. She had advanced MS and other health issues and dementia but was at the time she signed it, was of a sound enough mind to make it clear that she did not want any type of life support including a feeding tube by signing an Advanced Directive. And my husband had a POA and a medical POA.

Her condition eventually became so bad and beyond our ability to deal with, especially and after gallbladder surgery and a hysterectomy because of a grapefruit sized tumor and an increase of her incontinence and demenita, she was placed in a nursing home and eventually in an advanced care nursing home (somewhat between a hospital and a hospice).

But she’d been slowly starving herself long before then. She weighed all of 70 lbs at most before being admitted.

And all she wanted to talk about was her memories of her parents and her siblings, all now long dead and her childhood on the farm, and how much she wanted to join them in Heaven.

I got the feeling and from some things my husband told me, that Eleanor wasn’t always the best mom but had a rough upbringing herself and in a bad marriage to an alcoholic husband who died rather young who left her without any means to raise her son and daughter and perhaps resorted to some “unsavery” means of earning money, took to drink herself for a time and she was rather feisty, salty and rough around the edges a as a result.

Her long-term memory was fairly good, although I think selective, but even after having cared for her for the last 10 years, even bathing, cleaning her butt and privates, washing her hair, trimming her nails, laundering her soiled nightgowns and bedding and convincing her to eat something (all she really liked was canned Dinty More Beef Stew), while all the time she argued with me and sometimes even cursed at me, and while she could remember my ex-husband’s first wife’s name, she called me “Jackie’s Little Girl” – I don’t think she ever knew who I really was. It didn’t matter though, I still loved her.

In the nursing home and after a small stroke, she refused all food and drink and was now completely bed bound, unable to walk and I think at times in great pain even as she never complained, I could see it on her face. All she kept saying was she wanted to “go home” and by that she meant Heaven.

The doctor called my husband one day, saying they wanted to insert a feeding tube because of her refusal to eat, and after some discussions, my husband said no. Despite the Advanced Directives and his medical POA, they put one in anyway.

My husband’s sister, who in all the years my husband and I had been together, and I had been caring for their mother which stared years before we were married, she had never once come to visit her when she lived in a small apartment or after she was in the nursing home facility. NOT. EVEN. ONCE!

But evidently the doctor called her after my husband said he didn’t want her on a feeding tube, but she said the opposite. So, a feeding tube was put in.

Poor Evelyn suffered several infections at the site of the feeding tube and had to be moved to a hospital ICU twice which with being on Medicaid, if she was in the hospital for more than 3 days, she would lose her bed at the nursing facility of our choice and could be placed anywhere that had the first available open bed, a sub-par facility or one many, many miles away from us, unless we paid out of pocket to keep her bed which we did twice putting a lot of strain on our finances.

Eventually Evelyn became catatonic, in a persistent vegetative state, and drawn up into a fetal position and could not respond or acknowledge my husband or me, and despite what we saw as good care, developed bed sores. My SIL came one time while we were there at the advanced medical care facilty, saw her, cried and left after less than 5 minutes. Her daughter, also came but never came inside the room.

One day Evelyn’s heart stopped and despite a DNR order, they performed CPR and crushed several of her ribs in the process but were unable to revive her. At that point I was grateful that after all her suffering, she was finally going “home” to be with her parents and siblings.

The funeral arrangements were interesting as the funeral direct told us that he would have great difficulty placing her in her coffin as she’d been in a fetal position for so long, her joints had (IIRC) calcified.

We were fine with a closed casket but of course my SIL from Hell wanted a full viewing – 2 full days so her 3 chidlren, their children, their wives and husbands and ex-wives and friends, her ex-husbands, extened family who even my husband didn’t know, and all her friends and co-workers could come - an open casket and with all the bells and whistles which of course she wasn’t paying for.

The funeral direct told us and my SIL that in order for that to happen, they’d have to literally break bones and joints so she could be laid out in a natural looking sleeping position in her coffin.

I was against this but my husband and SIL had the last say so poor Eleanor suffered this final indignity after death of having her bones broken so she could be put on display for people, nearly all of them who had never known her in life.

And she, my SIL made quite the scene at the viewing weeping and wailing and pretty much making it all about herself.

And I was the one who went out to buy her a nice outfit to be placed in for the viewing as all she had by then were nightgowns. I had to buy a child sized dress because depiste the feeding tube, she probably weighed all of 50 lbs.

The funeral direct said he’d do the best he could as far as make up and even providing a wig as by the time of her death, had lost most of her hair but to be honest she looked like a mummified corpse made up to look alive – it was disturbing.

But on the day of her internment in a family plot at a small cemetery that sat on top of a hill, not far from the Howard County, MD farm where Evelyn grew up (and she was a decendent of the Howard family), perhaps she had the last laugh.

It was mid March and an unsusally warm day, the temp was over 80 by Noon.

But as we drove from the funeral home to the grave site, ominous dark clouds were forming on the horizon and the wind was whipping up.

As we gathered at the grave site the wind really whipped up, lighting and thunder getting ever closer and the sky turned a yellowish green color and her coffin was bouncing up and down on the straps to the point we feared it might blow away.

The minister my husband got to perform the service, the same Luthern minister who married us, did his best but as he saw the wall of clouds coming ever closer and perhaps a funnel cloud in the distance and Evelyn’s coffin bouncing up and down in the wind, he said the Lord’s Prayer faster than I’d ever hear anyone say it before, he sounded like an auctioneer, said, no yelled “Amen” and Evelyn was quickly lowered into the grave, then heavens opend up with a bliding raing soaking us as we ran to our cars.

I kept it to myself but couldn’t help but think Evelyn was sending a message from beyond. A final middle finger and an FU to those who near her end, didn’t really care about her. Good job Evelyn, I thought. Good job!


17 posted on 12/01/2024 7:19:45 AM PST by MD Expat in PA (No. I am not a doctor nor have I ever played one on TV. The MD in my screen name stands for Maryland)
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To: DoodleBob

Something similar happened a couple of years ago with a close relative. The hospital sent her to a hospice where they were refusing to provide food or water. “We don’t do that.” Granted, she was in bad shape at the time. So we her family brought in food and water until she recovered, which she did recover and has been fine since.


18 posted on 12/01/2024 7:38:29 AM PST by marron
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To: yldstrk

Years ago when I consulted for a medical association more than one MD told me with a straight face that the “useful life” of humans was about 75 and no steps should be taken to extend life beyond that age. I quit soon after.

Years later these same psychopaths used ventilators to kill COVID patients in the hospital.


19 posted on 12/01/2024 8:17:53 AM PST by whinecountry (Semper Ubi Sub Ubi)
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To: DoodleBob

Sadly, what you described happens often. A few years ago, for example, we knew someone who was not terminally ill but needed time to recover. This person was talked into signing a DNR at the hospital, and the ‘palliative care’ team was called in. Gone... within hours.


20 posted on 12/01/2024 8:41:15 AM PST by Tired of Taxes
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