Workshop participants address end-of-life questions

Eric Leake

Friday, March 4, 2005 | 4:23 a.m.

WEEKEND EDITION

March 5 - 6, 2005

A free bilingual end-of-life workshop is scheduled for March 19 from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the North Las Vegas Library, 2300 Civic Center Drive. Call 289-8248 to register or for more information about additional upcoming end-of-life workshops.

Members of a local synagogue spent a small portion their lives contemplating their deaths during an end-of-life workshop on a recent Tuesday evening.

Participants discussed the legal and ethical considerations in health care decisions and under what conditions they would rather be allowed to die. Some completed Advance Care Planning Forms.

Valley Outreach Synagogue Rabbi Richard Schachet said everybody should consider what they can do in advance to ease what may be troubled times for a family.

"It's not for us, these last-minute things," Schachet said. "It's for our families and especially our kids."

Workshop facilitator Elisabet "Lizzie" Romero works for the Nathan Adelson Hospice and conducts end-of-life workshops in cooperation with Nevada Center for Ethics & Health Policy at UNR.

Romero said people should make five decisions regarding end-of-life care.

Romero said the answers to the questions can be critical in how a family deals with death.

"It's usually not so much the patients, it's the families who have the hard time letting the person go," she said.

Before attending the workshop, Steve and Susie Lang, both in their late 50s, had thought about many of these end-of-life questions but they had not completed Nevada state forms regarding their choices.

"I don't think it's hard to make this decision," Steve Lang said, adding that it is harder when forced to make a decision for somebody else.

Only two couples attended the workshop, which was held around a dining table in the comfort of Schachet's home and outreach synagogue office. Schachet said more people had planned to attend but canceled because death can be troublesome to contemplate.

"It's very difficult for people to talk about this," he said. "I think it's interesting that people don't like to talk about death."

Schachet is an on-call chaplain for several local hospitals. He has seen families struggle with the emotions and the difficult decisions that death brings. And he has seen the way that can hinder surviving family members from continuing with their own lives, he said.

Schachet himself dealt with some of the same issues when his wife died last fall. Suddenly Schachet had to make decisions regarding burial and cremation options for his wife.

"We were very realistic, both of us, knowing that death could come at any time, though we always thought I'd go first," Schachet said.

By the end of the night, Schachet had completed his own forms, witnessed by the signatures of friends.

More end-of-life information and downloadable forms are available at www.NevadaDirectives.org.