Does anyone have any information about how to handle such directives when traveling overseas? I’m 77, and faced with a possibility that I will die in some third world country.
Googling, I find that even within the USA, such advance directives or Five Wishes, etc., aren’t necessarily even portable from one state to another. Otherwise, Google is pretty mute on this topic.
If I die or stricken by some terminal illness overseas, I don’t want to have resuscitation or heroic measures, nor do I want my body to be shipped (at obscene expense) back to the USA. Advance directives are usually stored with my medical records with my doctor at home, but fat chance a hospital in Ethiopia is going to have access to that. Is there any kind of document I can carry (possibly pasted into my passport) that would express such a wish to someone overseas?
I could write my own, concisely worded, to tip off local medical people about what I want, which would likely be taken to the US Embassy for interpretation, but what should it say and how legal would it be?
Obviously, every country will have different laws, but I at least want to alert people there of what I want, so they can consider acting accordingly.
Not a chance frankly. In the UK, the NHS would probably do their collective best to revive you in spite of any “living will”, a concept not generally recognised here. In Ethiopia, as you say, no one would even know.
I would say that your best bet would be to carry contact details for someone back home who is familiar with your wishes. Their number on yr phone labeled “Emergency Contact” and also in your passport (UK passports have a box for this).
As far as shipping a body back home, this would be up to your heirs. If they didn’t want to pay, it wouldn’t happen. Just make sure they know what you want.
I believe there are some countries that will not allow a deceased to remain there. The US embassy would be summoned, and compelled to export the remains, and go after whomever they can find to be reimbursed. Then there’s a need for all kinds of post-mortems and affidavits, to prove that the returning body is not a health hazard, harboring any communicable diseases. Maybe best to not tell them who my relatives are.
Only the embassy knows for sure, and I’d feel funny emailing the US embassy in Addis Ababa and saying “I’m planning on dying there, what are the locals regs?”
Some countries won’t let you in with an urn of ashes in your carryon, requiring something equivalent to a visa for a stiff to be brought in and disposed of there. So an alien or visitor who dies there would certainly have to be deported.
Get a Medic Alert bracelet and have “Do Not Resuscitate” printed on it. Any body doing any meaningful resuscitating will be able to read that in English. I would absolutely not worry about this at all. Even in Europe and the USA your chances of being successfully resuscitated outside of a hospital are small.
Seriously (if that can even be taken seriously). . . I know a guy in California who did that. He literally had tattooed on his chest, over his heart: “Do Not Resuscitate. Make it fast. Make it painless.”
Total crapshoot, I suppose, if anyone – even any first responder or other medic who happens to see that – would cooperate with that directive.
Fair enough, but it is not a legal or medical opinion I am looking for, but rather someone who knows of a standard legal instrument whose purpose is to convey this intent. Although, of course, absent such an instrument, alternate opinions are welcome. Since this is now reaching only users of the IMHO Forum, I’d like to make that clear.
This registration will ask you for emergency contact information - give them the information for a relative in the US who can hold DNR and living will papers for you, and can have the authority to speak for what you want to do.
This doesn’t mean you’ll definitely get what you want, but it is the best way to try to guarantee it.
When a mod moves a thread to another forum, there remains a link to it in the original forum too. So readers of BOTH forums will see it. Your thread will get even greater exposure!