Detailed advance directive dealing with my life

[Guest guest]

C

 

Monday, April 04, 2005 4:38 PM

Detailed advance directive dealing with my life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello,

 

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a

more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues.

Here's what mine says:

 

In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want

medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my

hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me. I

want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a

bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank

accounts. I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining

an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she

waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise

rebuilding a semblance of a normal life. I want my case to be turned

into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope

to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient

emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy

and that little girl who fell into a well. I want those crackpot

strangers to spread vicious lies about my wife. I want to be placed

in a hospice where protesters can gather for weeks on end, so they can

bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying

patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own. I want all

those people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep

devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any

judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree

with them. I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who

populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade

and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated

bloviation. I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news

anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me

" Johnny, " as if they had known me since childhood.

 

I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be

nice if Congress passed a " Johnny's Law " that applied only to me and

ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans

without adequate health coverage. Even if the " Johnny's Law " idea

doesn't work out, I want members of Congress - especially all those

self-described conservatives who claim to believe in " less government

and more freedom " - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and

other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want

members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them

another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the

economy. In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use

my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the

mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy

misbehavior. And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a

mockery of his medical training by misrepresenting the details of my

case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential

campaign. I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical

condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape

that should have remained private.

 

Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent

vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly

mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as

governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it

is always best " To err on the side of life " . I want the state

Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to

take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever

happen to anyone under DCF's care. And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the

smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, a

man who has never made a mistake or allowed his judgment to be sullied

by personal or political concerns, I want any and all of the

aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to

disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't

be in any position to argue.