The benefits of having an Advance Care Plan in place – Transcript

My mom was diagnosed with frontal lobe Alzheimer's in 2008. She was 75 years old.

And we were told it was going to advance quite quickly.

She already was quite advanced, but she was aware of what she wanted.

Eventually became ill one day, ended up in the Foothills Emergency.

The ER doctor looked at us and said: 'does your mom have a goals of care designation?' and we looked at him and said: 'yes, she does.'

And so we told him what her care designation was, and he said: 'then all I can suggest is palliative care at this point.'

And that was a hard decision.

But we knew that it was what she wanted. She had her end-of-life planned. So, it made it a lot easier.

We set her up in our living room, gave us all time, all 6 of us, and friends, and extended family an opportunity to come and say their goodbyes. 

[Text on screen]: What I suggest for others

Go to Alberta Health Services. They have, on their website, they have Conversations Matter.

There's lots of information available on their website.

Ask their family doctor about the green sleeve, the advanced care planning, goals of care designation.

And put a plan in place. But put it in place with your family.

You have to involve your children.

One of the things we learned from our experience was spouses weren't involved.

And I've been married for 43 years almost, and my husband knew my mom just as well as I did almost, and he was upset that he wasn't involved in the conversation.

And so we learned a lot through the process of what we would do differently if we ever had to do it again.

And one of the things was maybe to involve more people.

It would have been a very different experience because we were all… we all knew the day would come, but we didn't want to think about it. We didn't want to talk about it. It wasn't a topic of discussion around the dinner table.

But once we put the plan in place and had the discussion, I think that that just helped to make everything so much easier.

I think with 6 kids, because we all knew that this is what our mother wanted, we all stuck to the plan.

We had a couple of naysayers. We had a couple people in denial, saying: 'this is not the end.' But we were able, the rest of us, to gather around those naysayers and say: 'you know, it is time. This is time. This is what she wanted.'

It's a whole different story when you have it set down on paper and signed, and it's a legal document. It just makes everybody go through the process easier, when they know they're accommodating the wishes of their loved one.​