I am interested in warning the public about the danger of surrendering your Living Will or Advanced Directives document to a physician or hospital prior to what has been determined the moments of your "imminent death".

My 56 year old husband, a cancer patient of 12 years and under the care of physicians at the Mayo Clinic at Rochester, MN, had returned home to Indianapolis for recovery from a liver procedure, to include maintenance and support from his hand-picked local oncologist, a man who when interviewed for this position enthusiastically agreed to be part of the "team".  However, in the weeks prior to his death, the physician did everything possible to thwart my husband's recovery, causing him extreme mental and physical abuse.

My husband was admitted to a hospital here in Indianapolis (I refer to it as            ) for an overnight stay to have fluid removed from his abdomen for his comfort on the trip back to Mayo the following week. When the phone rang the next morning - I thought to notify me to come pick him up - I was told that he would live only a few minutes more and not to come.  I went anyway, thinking surely that this was a mistake and as friends and family exclaimed, "They have the wrong patient!".  Dennis had been dead approximately a half hour when I arrived.  Nurses related THREE different stories as to what had happened.  When I picked up the records two weeks later, I discovered that he had been put on "comfort care" and "do not resuscitate" orders and given broken timed-release morphine along with other narcotics and sleeping meds which caused him to suffer respiratory failure - a patient who had entered the hospital with no lung distress and an oxygen saturation level of 98%.  He was denied hydration and nutrition even though he was conscious and was requesting it!

The physician who attended the death and wrote the report described the patient as (1) having suffered the rapid advancement of his cancer in the last month, (2) having been a hospice patient, (3) and been admitted to the hospital for terminal care. ALL UNTRUE except, of course. for #3, because the admitting physician had indeed admitted him for terminal care.

The patient's Living Will was on file and while the provisions of the document were not followed, that fact allowed the admitting doctor to write the death orders WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OR PERMISSION of either the patient or his family, and then we were excluded from even being there when he died.

It is my BELIEF that this is not an isolated case.  In the last sixteen months I have consulted numerous attorneys, the prosecutor's office, and then more attorneys, unable to get anyone to take an interest in this case.  My goal at this juncture:  To warn cancer and other chronically ill and elderly persons to beware of giving knowledge of your Living Will or Advanced Directives to doctors or hospitals. INSTEAD, provide them with the name of your legally designated representative who is the caretaker of you and your wishes in the event you cannot speak for yourself.