Dear Judy,
I thought your advice yesterday to that woman whose friend had leukemia — and who refused to acknowledge she was terminal, despite her doctor’s prognosis – was shameful!
No. 1 — the dying need to put, as her own doctor put it, their affairs in order. So lying to yourself just means that when the time [...]
Dear Judy,
I see from your previous advice on thecheckoutline.org that you’re a big fan of living wills. But what do you do if a parent doesn’t have one and is dying?
Our mother has ovarian cancer, and it’s metastasized into bone cancer. So she’s in some pain (even with pain medication). From time to time I [...]
Dear Judy,
My boyfriend (ridiculous word) of 10 years and I aren’t speaking to each other right now, and I guess you’re the person to turn to, given your web site.
I notice that lately a few people have been writing in about heroic measures that they do or do not want in case of emergency. In [...]
“Dear Judy, often you tell people, rightly, to write a will,” one reader writes. “But please emphasize it’s really important they do so if they have a complex estate, or a lot of relatives.”
Actually, here’s the most important person you should write a will for: You.
I know, I know. You’re not going to inherit anything [...]
Dear Judy,
First, of all thank you for this very much needed service. I just wish I’d had the opportunity to access good advice during the periods of my life when I lost loved ones. Nevertheless, I am glad to have somewhere to turn now for ideas on how to deal with my own end of [...]
Dear Judy,
Maybe you’ve never gotten an email like this before. Our father had a stroke 2 months ago and is now on life support. He has tubes running all through him, for eating and for breathing too. He can’t talk. He recognizes nobody.
My younger brother who lives in Salt Lake City, more than 900 miles [...]
Dear Judy,
I hear you get a lot of emails from people who don’t think dying is the worst thing that can happen to a person. But I do. My father is in hospice care, and my mother and sister want his feeding tube removed. I think that’s about on a par with murder.
My father has thyroid [...]
Dear Judy,
I’m 60, and I had a recent health scare. It turned out to be nothing serious, but I think I really learned something from the experience. I want to start preparing now for the inevitable.
But my stabs at wise planning — Living Will, funeral planning (I want cremation) etc — are scaring the hell out [...]
Just about every other week a reader writes in with some version of the same question: Who, in the event of an unbearable terminal illness, has the right to shorten a life?
And just about every other week that question sent me scrambling for answers.
Two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to find myself at the Funeral Consumers Alliance [...]
Dear Judy,
Alzheimers has taken so much of my mother’s mind that she can’t even recognize her own grown children, me included. Needless to say, we are all devastated. Yesterday her doctor told my younger sister and me that within very short order our mother won’t even be able to swallow. The doctor wanted to know if we, her children, [...]
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Posted on January 24th, 2009