Why Can't Death Certificates Be "Partially Completed" Before We Die?

 I was reading Shaina Feinberg & Julia Rothman's excellent New York Times article "I Asked My Mom if She Was Prepared to Die."  It had a lot of practical information on "getting ready for death," like making sure your financial accounts have other signatories, and reminding the survivors to order more death certificates than they think they'll need.  Yes, you will need more than 10, trust me.

 Which made me wonder - why can't we complete our death certificates with all that family information in advance?  Granted, we don't know when or how we'll die, but most of us know our family information better than our significant other might.

A few years ago, after our father died, my brother completed the death certificate.  Except...he listed the wrong state for where our grandmother was born.  This error, though minor, will drive future genealogists nuts.  I actually added a note to my Ancestry.com record for our father saying that his death certificate had this error.

Many decades ago, after my husband's grandfather died, his grandmother listed the wrong country for his birth.  He was born in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, she listed his country of birth as Germany, since he came over speaking German when he was a boy.  I added the same note to my grand-father-in-law's Ancestry record - wrong country on death certificate.

The notion of filling out a death certificate in advance may seem macabre but we all will need one some day. Collecting this information, which is later certified by a doctor or funeral home after death with information around a death, should be reasonably trivial due to the World Wide Web.  Each state can set up the appropriate online death certificate online. I believe every state has a different death certificate format. Each person could set up a death certificate account for the state in which they live, fill it out with the accurate info while they're alive, and tell their next-of-kin that they have such an account and how to access it.

And even if this information can't be immediately imported into an actual death certificate, when the doctor/funeral home goes to complete it, they could have all the accurate information for that person readily available. 

I tried to find out what a current state of Pennsylvania death certificate looks like.  I could not find one at the Pennsylvania records Web site.  I've seen recent Florida and Massachusetts death certificates, and many old death certificates as part of doing genealogical research. I understand the reluctance to not display an entire current death certificate online (fraud) but why not display the portions that could be completed before death?

Let's use the Web for some useful record-keeping for survivors' families by letting people partially complete the "life" part of their death certificate while they're still with us.  It'll save their next-of-kin hassle when they have to complete someone else's death certificate.

Body Breakdown...

 

Well, as we get older and our bodies break down, things happen we don't expect.

I've been a fat person most of my life, and took up walking seriously about 10 years ago. While it didn't really help me lose weight, I wasn't gaining weight, my back improved dramatically, and it gave me a lot more confidence about what I could do. I walked 16 miles in a day on two different days in 2015, and at least 10 miles a day a few dozen times over the years. My average was 4-5 miles a day over 10 years.

 

The last few years, I've not had the energy to walk as much as I'd like. My legs hurt or just felt funny. 

 

The first few times this happened, it seemed to be due to being on statins for a long time. I was on statins for 11 years without any side effects, and then started taking statin breaks. After a few weeks, I'd start feeling better and I could increase my walking. But then my cholesterol would zoom back up again so I'd go back on statins.

 

Yes, I have improved my eating habits. But that's no enough.

 

Anyway, last year when I took a statin break, it took 4 months before I started feeling better, which was weird. I also had very severe pain in my legs at night a few times. My old doctor sent me for some testing (including a nerve conduction test, yuck). Everything came back normal. 

 

I felt better in September and October, got a new doctor, and went on a statin-like drug (Xetia) which is supposed to not have the side effects that statins have. But within a few weeks, I was having trouble with my legs again. At Boskone, I could not keep up with a group walking a few blocks away for dinner one night and I had leg pain all weekend long.

 

After dithering, I went back to my new doctor, complaining about the problems I was having. She wanted me to have another nerve conduction test which I resisted since the one last year added up to nothing. But she told me to get a spinal X-ray and a bunch of blood tests. And then she said she didn't think I was having side effects from the drug, she thought I might have spinal stenosis.

 

Got my blood test and my X-ray. X-ray confirmed spinal stenosis. It basically means some nerves to other parts of my body are getting compressed by the vertebra. It's degenerative, but for severe cases (and mine is just mild), sometimes they do surgery. A hallmark of this condition appears to be back pain, which I haven't had; so far it's mostly been leg pain. All the blood tests came back fine, so the constant fatigue seems a little odd - my sleeping has generally improved over the last 2 years.

 

This is a very odd condition, because some days I feel pretty good. But just 2 nights ago, I had pain bad enough I couldn't get out of my chair to get aspirin, I had to ask Jim to get it for me.

 

Just 5 years ago, we hiked for 3 days on the Dingle Penninsula. I'd hoped I could still do hiking like that, but since the fall, I've been having trouble standing for 2 hours of volunteer work.

 

The good news is, we have excellent insurance and a house where I can mostly avoid stairs. But I would rather spend our retirement money on travel than on rehab.

 

Today I'll be calling the physical therapy folks at the nearby hospital to set up some PT sessions.

Barbie vs. Bella. (Spoilers Galore)

I saw Barbie last summer and really enjoyed it.  It was charming, delightful and a bit threatening.  It had the production design of a Malibu Barbie Dream House. Margot Robbie gave an excellent performance.  It had two very touching moments - the famous America Ferrara speech (which most women were silently cheering as she spoke) and the "Blue Fairy" scene with Barbie's creator, Ruth Handler, made Barbie a real, live person.  As I was never a Barbie kid, I didn't expect to like it as much as I did.

The ending:  Funny, Barbie makes the choice to be an utterly mundane women.

I saw Poor Things last fall and really enjoyed it.  It was sometimes charming, fascinating and very threatening in places.  It had the production, costume and make-up design of a crazy child, as if Bella herself was designing the movie.  Emma Stone gave a very raw performance.  Poor Things wasn't touching in the way the Barbie was, but it was much more dangerous.

The ending: A bit creepy but mostly uplifting.  An average rich Victorian afternoon with overtones of The Freaks.

Both movies have a very similar theme - a woman creating herself.

Poor Things was a better movie as it's much more audacious than Barbie, but Barbie was very enjoyable and much more accessible.

Post 2024 Oscars:  I predicted Poor Things would win Best Make-up, Best Costumes and Best Production Design.  I really enjoyed Emma Stone's committed performance in Poor Things, but thought Lily Gladstone would win for her very quiet performance in Killers of the Flower Moon.  But the Oscars followed the BAFTAs in almost all ways and Emma Stone won.

Even though it won only 1 Oscar, the cast/crew of Barbie made the Oscar Ceremony more fun than it had been in years.  Ryan Gosling's "I'm Just Ken" was an absolute riot and it was great to involve the audience the way it did.