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LOVELL — Advanced care planning will be the topic of a workshop from 7 to 8:30 p.m., Thursday, April 27, at Charlotte Hobbs Memorial Library. Physician Marianne Jackson and Joan Lanoie will discuss how to have conversations about end-of-life values, and participants will be provided with the free Maine Advanced Directives and get help completing the document, as well as get practice with tools to open the conversation about values, preferences and priorities.
Those who already have a directive are also invited to attend, and the discussion will also cover topics like what it means not to be a burden, choosing restrictions on life sustaining treatments, what a trial of treatment is and how long it should go on, resolutions and clarifying wishes.
“This workshop will help you identify and put in writing personal, spiritual and emotional issues everyone will face when experiencing serious illness or end of life,” organizers said in a news release. They said the workshop welcomes families, partners, or just friends to attend and share their ideas.
Jackson was an obstetrician-gynecologist in New Hampshire for 25 years before leaving to complete a masters in public health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She worked in patient quality and public safety, and returned to the Mount Washington Valley in 2015. Now retired and living in Madison, H.H., “she is devoting much of her energy toward making conversations about end-of-life decision making a natural and comfortable topic for families,” the release said.
Lanoie is a former childbirth educator and now one of many advanced care planning facilitators in the Mont Washington Valley. She notes, “Planning for end of life is not unlike planning for bringing a new life into the world. There are many unknowns that lie ahead in both situations, the more informed and prepared a family is, the easier and less stressful the transition will be.” She is the president of the Board for Visiting Nurse Home and Hospice of Carroll County and also lives in Madison, N.H.
