Have Your Wishes Honored Using Advance Directives

I've heard many times that one of the first smart things to do after a diagnosis of dementia is to sit with a lawyer and write up something called an "Advance Directive." This video finally opened my eyes as to why I keep hearing about it.

In this video, Alice Reiter Feld, Esquire, discusses HIPAA Privacy Laws and how they impact people with dementias such as Alzheimer's. She covers the importance of an Advance Directive document in "Pre-Crisis Planning" and how such a document avoids court-assigned guardianship.

I was really moved by a letter she received from a daughter-in-law who bore powerful testimony to what this piece of paper meant to her father-in-law when he passed on. His directive was to be home and they had hospice for him in his bedroom of many years. Alice reads the letter, which ends with,

"I was with my father-in-law on the last day of his life. He sat in bed, face so luminous... Later that day, I understood why. My father-in-law was at home. He was surrounded by family and he was dying as he wished. He, one of the winners, had won."