Originally posted by Cinder & Smoke
TRY to get Mom and Dad to BOTH sign "Medical Power of Attorney" to name ALL the members of the family to participate in medical decisions.
Thanks for the tip Phred, but our entire family has had all these papers filled out ever since her heart attack 11 years ago. However, we should probably update everything since things might be different now with all the HIPPA rules like Sara mentions. I know who has the right to make decisions for my mom and dad, but how can we make the decisions if the doctors can't tell us what's going on?

And thanks for the link on the Advanced Directives. I have all the necessary paperwork filled out, but Terry doesn't and since this is all over the news lately, he's been pushing to get his filled out. I also need to fill out State of Illinois paperwork since my paperwork is from Wisconsin. In theory Illinois should honor my wishes made in Wisconsin, but by law they don't have to because each state has different laws for this type of thing. So I do need to update everything.

Thanks so much everyone. I talked to her again last night and she seemed fine and probably just ready to put the whole thing behind her. She is the type to draw attention away from herself - and she is very good at it! - so next thing you know we're discussing what Terry and I did last weekend and such and I'm like "Wait a minute, I'm not done with you and what the doctor said!"

So, like everyone seems to think, they wouldn't have let her go if it was anything serious, so we'll just hope and pray that it really isn't anything serious and she'll be ok.

Doesn't help when I hear an ad on the TV this morning about how once every minute a woman dies from a stroke or heart related illness. They were advertising Bayer - give me a break!