Program will cover advanced planning and End of Life options

SENIORS FOR PEACE

The Seniors For Peace Club will meet today, May 2, at 2 p.m. in Clubhouse 3, Room 9, for a program presented by Linda Rowe, a volunteer with End of Life Choices California.

Rowe will outline the value of advance care planning, a process that enables individuals to make plans about their future health care choices and is applicable to adults at all stages of life. She will discuss the concept of value worksheets as a way to help people consider what is most important for their life and for their health care and how to talk with family, friends, and medical providers about their wishes.

Rowe will also review the legal end-of-life options in California including discontinuing or declining medical treatments, hospice and palliative care, and voluntarily stopping eating and drinking. Additional detail will be provided about California’s End of Life Option Act (2016), a law that is also referred to as Medical Aid in Dying. There will be ample time for questions and discussion at the end of her presentation.

Rowe is not a medical professional. She has been a marketing and sales professional but has always valued her other roles more as a daughter, a sister, a friend, a mother and a wife. For the past year she has volunteered with End of Life Choices California, a nonprofit organization. In the last 10 years she has been a hospice volunteer and had the privilege of sitting at many bedsides for clients and loved ones. Rowe says, “I feel strongly in presenting to you today because I’ve walked every step of this presentation with my own parents, and each step led us to a very positive end of life experience.”

This is a difficult topic to talk or think about, which is precisely why it is important for people to hear about it, so they can be prepared before the need arises in their lives.

All residents are invited to attend. Call Pat Kruger at 562357-4040 for more information.

Linda Rowe