18/03/2025
From my dear friend Nikki ❤️
Make your choices matter – Why Advance Care Planning is a gift to your loved ones.
What if you were unable to make decisions about your own care? Would your family know what you’d want?
According to Palliative Care Nurse Practitioner Nikki, ‘Some of us will not have decision-making capacity when the time comes to die, and that’s why it’s important to have a conversation with our legally appointed decision-maker and document our wishes.’
For Nikki’s 64-year-old patient, having an Advance Care Plan meant her family didn’t have to guess. After a devastating stroke left her unconscious in ICU, her partner arrived with her documented wishes in hand. ‘Living well to me means being able to communicate with my loved ones and to be independent living on the farm,’ she had written. She had also stated that if she couldn’t return to that level of independence, she wanted comfort care and to donate her organs.
Her children were heartbroken but relieved. They didn’t have to make an impossible decision—Nikki’s patient had already made it for them. ‘Carrying out her wishes made it a little bit easier somehow.’
‘When there is no Advance Care Plan, families can suffer, feeling guilty that they made the wrong decision. Should they have said to turn the machine off? Should they have agreed to surgery when their mother lived for 10 years in a nursing home being tube-fed, not able to communicate, and bedbound?’
There are also many misconceptions about Advance Care Planning. Some people think it’s only for the elderly or terminally ill, but the reality is, accidents and sudden illnesses can happen to anyone. Others believe that talking about death is too confronting, but Nikki says, ‘People, especially older people, want to talk about and plan for their death. Just like living well matters, so does dying well.’
Having the conversation doesn’t have to be scary. Start simple: What matters most to you? What do you want—or not want—at the end of your life?
Make your choices matter. Talk to your loved ones and put your wishes in writing.
