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For more information about the New York State health care proxy and living will you can attend a presentation on advance care planning at xxx xxxx at Lifelong. Call xxx xxxx to register. Members of the On My Own Terms Coalition are also available to make presentations on advance care planning at your place of work, place of worship, club or community organization. Call Xxx Xssssss at Lifelong (xxx-xxxx) or Xxxx Xxxxxx at Hospicare (xxx xxxx) to schedule a presentation.
Bill Hawley is executive director at Lifelong. Nina Miller is executive director at Hospice Services and Hospicare Residence.
The Ithaca Journal's guest columns on aging are coordinated by the Ithaca College Gerontology Institute in cooperation with the Aging Services Network of Tompkins County. The columns are published on the fourth Wednesday of each month.
And their mantra is frayed...
As you can see, there is a lot to think about regarding the possible future care you may need. Oftentimes, we think that advance care planning is something only older people need to worry about, but that is not true. Both Nancy Cruzan and Terry Schiavo were just 25 years old when they went into their persistent vegetative state. Both families went through years of agony before Nancy and Terry died.
Trust these hustlers NOT to mention that both Terri and Nancy Cruzan were killed by removal of their feeding tubes. In the latter's case, it was Cruzan's own parents who sued to kill her (and eventually won).
The Cruzan case was the real precursor of Terri's legal fight. Read all about it here: Supreme Court ruling in Missouri vs. Cruzan. Interestingly, the conservative majority in this ruling voted for life, the liberal dissenters argued for death. Note also that the Court found that the Cruzans had not presented "clear and convincing" evidence of Nancy's wish to forego medical care. The evidence was as flimsy as the vague hearsay offered by Mike, Scott and Joan Schiavo to kill Terri, but in the Cruzan case, the courts weren't buying it. In Terri's case, Greer fell all over himself saying how much he believed that garbage.