Welcome to the Lightkeepers Podcast.
I'm Clayton Vandiver, your lightkeeper, and this show is dedicated to everyone who wants
to get the very most out of life that they can.
With me on this edition is someone very special to all of us.
Charlene is a licensed clinical social worker certified in the state of Florida who has
brought us some vital information that you need to know about end of life planning and
important resources you want to know about that can help you get the very most out of
every remaining day.
We'll be talking about that and much more on this edition of the Lightkeepers Podcast.
Before we start, I'd like to invite you to please leave your questions and comments down
below.
We love to hear from you.
Questions this week will be answered during our next show that appears online every Wednesday
evening around 7 p.m. Eastern.
The Lightkeepers Podcast is an exclusive production of A Guiding Light, Inc.
We'll tell you more about A Guiding Light at the end of the podcast, but we don't have
much time, so let's get right into this week's topics, which are end of life events, planning
for the best life, medical teams and how they work, preparing for a hospital stay, the five
wishes, and we may even touch on why end of life conversations are so taboo.
So welcome to the show, Charlene.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you for having me.
Well, tell me a little bit about what a social worker is and what you do.
So as you said, I am a licensed clinical social worker for the state of Florida.
I hold a master's degree in social work with a specialty in clinical counseling.
I also hold a master's in hospice and palliative care.
I've spent over a decade working in the hospital, in the ICU, in the trauma department and in
hospice, so this is a topic I'm very familiar with.
Outstanding.
Well, let me ask you, what exactly is an end of life event and why do we need to plan for
it?
So an end of life event is not what a lot of people think it is.
A lot of people think that an end of life event is someone dying, like the moment of
death.
An end of life event encompasses a lot of things leading up to that.
I like to think of an end of life event kind of like the beginning of life event.
Death is a lot like birth.
We plan for a birth.
We prepare for a birth.
There are things that we need to know about a birth.
Death is no different.
I understand.
So a terminal diagnosis, end of life planning, these are very scary things to think about.
Absolutely.
We concentrate our energy more on life and living and don't really think about or focus
on planning for the end times.
Why is end of life such a taboo subject in our culture and are we just so busy living
and thinking about it or planning how we want to manage our own decisions will somehow make
it all happen sooner?
I think a lot of people are afraid that if they talk about it, it's going to speak it
into being.
Okay.
And I think some people have a hard time imagining not being here.
So it's difficult to talk about because it's difficult to envision.
There's also a pretty healthy dose of denial in there.
I heard someone very comically say that denial is not just a river that flows through Egypt.
And unfortunately, it's true.
A lot of people have denial when it comes to end of life, but it is going to happen
and not talking about it is not going to keep it from happening.
So far not talking about it hasn't saved anyone that I know.
And I don't think then that we're living such busy lives that talking about it or planning
how we want to manage our own decisions will somehow make it suddenly happen.
Why is it important to plan how you want things to be done if you should become hospitalized?
There are a lot of reasons to plan for it.
First and foremost, if you are in a situation where you cannot make your own decisions,
maybe you're unconscious, maybe you're temporarily confused for whatever reason, if you can't
make your own decisions, who is going to know what kind of care you want?
And doctors are going to do what they feel is best for you, but that may not necessarily
be the care that you want.
Having those documents in place, you're speaking for yourself in a time when you're not going
to be able to.
But all those medical professionals, the doctors, the specialists, the social workers, don't
they have the same goals in mind?
And can you be sure that they have your goals in mind?
So doctors, hospitals, social workers, they all have one goal in mind.
The doctors in the hospitals, they're focused on keeping you alive for as long as possible
because that's what they've been trained to do.
The social worker will do what they can to advocate for you, but they have to know what
you want.
If they don't know what you want, then they're going to try to find family that might.
And therein lies another reason why it's important to have that planning in place.
Because if you maybe don't want your family making those decisions, legally that's who
the hospital is going to go to.
Wow.
Well, I've had some members of our audience ask me a few questions before today's show.
They were asking about the Five Wishes, Five Wishes Directives.
What are those?
So the Five Wishes is a document that's legally binding in most of the United States.
And it's an advanced care planning document, an advanced directive, which is another nice
way of saying it's a document that outlines the type of care you would want if you were
to become seriously ill.
And it's very simple to complete.
It's laid out in a very simple format.
And it asks just a few questions about the type of care that you would want in situations
where you might not be able to speak for yourself.
Okay.
Well, if you have, let's say, a memory disorder or Alzheimer's, dementia, will that impact
those plans once they're in place?
It can.
It can because, first of all, once someone is diagnosed with a memory disorder or a cognitive
deficit disorder and they have been determined by their doctor to not be able to make their
own decisions, they can no longer complete those documents.
They can, but they would not be legally binding.
They would not be valid.
So the only way to make sure that their wishes are followed is to have those documents completed
beforehand.
Well, how should family members be involved in these plans?
Family members should absolutely be involved for a multitude of reasons.
First of all, it's important for your family to know what you want because they're most
likely going to be the ones contacted by your medical team when you're in need.
The other reason why it's important for your family to know what you want is because by
letting them know you're taking away the risk for potential conflict down the line, there's
nothing worse than when you have multiple children and they don't agree on the kind
of care that mom or dad should get.
Ah.
Well, we often think of, you know, after all of these plans are concluded, we think of
funeral homes taking care of most of the arrangements and plans from that point on.
That can be a subject that takes us in a lot of directions.
And maybe we should dedicate a whole show to that, save it for later.
But is being an organ donor something that might interfere with those wishes at the end
or somehow with the hospital make things more complicated?
Yes, it can.
First of all, I am fully in support of organ donations.
There are a lot of people on the transplant list that need those organs.
Absolutely.
But if you have someone whose wishes are to not be kept alive on life support and they
are a registered organ donor, then what's going to happen is it takes time to set up
that whole process.
It takes time to find a recipient.
It takes time to put the medical team together.
And that can take weeks.
It can take days.
Point is, is until that is put together, that person is going to be kept alive on life support.
That sounds like a topic we could probably do an entire program on as well.
There's a lot of information there that people might not know.
This is true.
Well, before we go, tell me, is there anything at all in the subject of end of life events
that we can look forward to?
That is there anything uplifting, anything positive that we can leave our audience with
that can give some hope to this subject and that it should not be such a big taboo like
so many think it is?
Absolutely.
So life happens in the moments and sometimes it's easy to forget that until you start thinking
about the time when those moments are behind you.
That is wisdom to live by.
And that's exactly what this program is all about is helping our audience get the most
out of each day and live each day exactly the way that they want to.
Because only by planning for the end can you make sure you get there exactly under the
terms that you've set down.
Well, thank you so much for being here with us today and bringing this important information
to us.
I hope that you'll be able to join us in these upcoming shows because so much of this needs
to be expanded on and talked about more.
It's not all sadness and depressing to talk about end of life events because every single
one of us will face them and either not prepared at all or very well prepared indeed from joining
us here on the Lightkeepers podcast each and every week.
We hope you found some interesting information that was helpful on this edition of Lightkeepers
podcast.
Please leave your questions or comments below.
We love to hear from you.
Questions this week will be answered during our next show that appears online every Wednesday
evening around 7 p.m. Eastern.
The Lightkeepers podcast is an exclusive production of Animation Studios and is brought to you
by a Guiding Light, a 501c3 nonprofit organization dedicated to education and information that
allows informed preparation for end of life event decisions.
The organization is committed to training professionals who will help you find the best
information and options to meet your planning needs that are available in your area so you
can be aware of your choices, confident in your decisions and at peace that you've made
the best decisions to live life your way.
For more information on a Guiding Light, please visit the website at aguidinglight.org or
to make a tax deductible contribution to help those less fortunate find the information
and resources that they need.
Please visit the donate page on the website where you'll find tax information and the
address to send your check that is also on the screen right below me.
We're so grateful for your support and sincerely hope you'll join us in the coming weeks as
we'll talk about organ donors and hospitals, funeral homes and your plans, the gap between
legal jargon and medical care, metabolized grief, ingesting grief, normalizing loss,
hospice, not just for the last few days or hours, medical plans and paperwork, and your
questions and comments at the beginning of each episode.
We love to hear from you.
Speaking of that, hit the like and subscribe buttons and turn on that notify bell so you
won't miss a single episode of the Light Keepers Podcast.
I'm Clayton Vandiver, your light keeper.
We'll see you then.