my will be done

Tomorrow I get the pleasure of taking the day off of work to have a man I barely know poke, prod, and in general mess with my insides for a little over an hour with the overall goal of improving said insides.  For that pleasure, I (by proxy of my insurance) will pay him a lot of money.  The reasons why aren’t really important; I’m fine, I’m healthy, and I will continue to be both fine and healthy… although, I will admit to trepidation at the thought of being incapacitated via anesthesia by people with lots of tiny knives.

In the process of prepping for tomorrow, the hospital called to run though a battery of questions re: my state of health and preparedness for the ‘ol slice ‘n dice.  The coolest among them: "do you feel safe in your home?"  Yep, they were screening me for domestic violence, which is awesome on two levels: 1) they’re doing it at all and 2) they’re doing it without gender bias.  Go you.

But the question that really got me thinking was if I had a will, living or otherwise.  With as much as my family has talked about the importance of having a Last Will and Testament in the last few years, it’s quite ridiculous that I don’t have one of my own.  I think I fell into that trap of thinking that, since I don’t have any dependants, there’s nothing to worry about b/c it all go to my parents anyway. 

I’ve been a poor grad student so long that it is still hard for me to believe that I have anything that I should worry about passing along.  Or maybe it’s because I’m still trying very hard to convince myself that I’m invincible?  The majority of my assets are in retirement funds anyway, and they have their beneficiaries set up, so I don’t have much to worry about there anyway.

It’s really the living will part of it that got me thinking.  Firstly, that I should have one.  But, then about what should be in it… all the what-ifs about DNR orders and the like came to mind in a flash.  Potential veggieness kind freaks me out as I truly don’t want to be a burden to anyone.  But I don’t want anyone to be yanking any cords without some independent thought applied.  There needs to be a brain behind the decision, because putting down on paper your "wishes" is impossible with that many corner cases.  That’s a functional specification that I don’t really think anyone can write well.

So, while the situational specifics are impossible, the philosophy is pretty basic for me: put my body to good use after I vacate it (donate every last bit that will help someone else), don’t let me live longer than you’d want to live in that condition yourself (use good judgement), and for-the-love-of-god don’t show me on national television as a vegetable (the SouthPark’ian lesson from the Terry Schiavo case).

So, for tomorrow, it’s too late and I’ll just have to trust my power of attorney to know me well enough to know what I’d like.  It’s not like it’s a real risk or anything… it’s just tiny holes for the purpose of an internal patch-job… but it’s enough to get me thinking.