‘I want to pat dogs until I die’: End-of-life planning should be more than just Living Wills
‘I want to pat dogs until I die’: End-of-life planning should be more than just Living Wills
Healthy Debate; by Kathy Kastner; 5/4/25
France Légaré, Canada Research Chair in Shared Decision-Making and Knowledge Mobilization, wants to have stimulating conversations and be able to move around with her dog until she dies. Daneil Martin, the Chair of the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Women’s College Hospital, wants to “smell chocolate until I die.” The two doctors are among the 200+ who took the time to fill in the blank on a whiteboard, “I WANT TO__ UNTIL I DIE,” an initiative I undertook after tuning in to a hospice and palliative care medicine Twitter chat in the good old days of Twitter. As a layperson who became an entrepreneur in the health space, I was intrigued by the lament of health-care professionals on the chat: If only people talked about end-of-life wishes more, much grief could be avoided.