Choosing / Becoming A Proxy

If you don't currently have a health care proxy, there are three situations you could be in.

1. You have a family member or close friend who you know would be willing to be your proxy.

Then you should get moving. Speak to that person about being your health care proxy. If they also don't have a proxy, the two of you might very well agree to become each other's proxies. If that person already has a proxy, or are the proxy for someone else, they still could also be your proxy. There are families in which one person is the proxy for multiple family members.

Assume the person you have in mind agrees to become your proxy (otherwise jump to #2 or #3 below). First complete an Advance Care Planning Document for yourself, sign it, and have it witnessed. [Click the Complete the Paperwork button below.] (This planning document should be in the form appropriate for your state.) Give a copy to the person who has agreed to become your proxy, and discuss your planning document with them to ensure they understand your wishes, and are comfortable with carrying out your wishes.

If you will also become that person's proxy, clearly the two of you should discuss each other's planning documents so that both of you understand each other's wishes, and are comfortable carrying them out.

Now fill out a Health Care Proxy Designation form, appropriate for your state, designating the person you have chosen as your proxy. [Click the Complete the Paperwork button below.] Sign the Health Care Proxy Designation with witnesses, and provide your proxy with copies of both your Advance Care Planning Document and your Health Care Proxy Designation. If you will also be serving as the proxy to chosen proxy, then they will fill out and sign the form designating you as their proxy and provide you with copies of both their advance planning document and health care designation form.

2. You do not have a health care proxy, but there is an extended family member, or a friend, who you imagine you might be able to convince to fulfill that role for you.

Then turn that imagination into reality. Get together with that extended family member or friend, and explain to them that you need a health care proxy, and that you think they would be a good person to fill that role for you.

You may or may not be fairly close to this person. If you are fairly close to this person, you might proceed directly, as in #1 above, to arrange for them to be your proxy (or for each of you to be each other's proxy).. If you are not especially close to this person, you may want to consider using some of the friendship acceleration techniques with them (as in #3 below). [Click the Friendship Acceleration button below.]

3. You are without a proxy, and have no one among family or friends who you immediately feel could fill that role.

You are said to be proxyless. Neither item #1 nor #2 above will be applicable for you. This is not unusual, especially for seniors, but nonetheless, it is definitely a problem. At the simplest, you need to make a new friend who can act as your proxy. There are two parts to that:

1. Finding a person who will be a candidate for becoming your friend;
2. Growing a friendship with that person.

Assuming you have found a candidate for a new friendship (Step A above), typically under ordinary circumstances it may take a year or two to form a new friendship substantive enough to support proxies. This is a problem since you would certainly like to get your proxy in place sooner than a year or two. One way of approaching this problem is to use a technique called friendship acceleration. In effect, when things go well, the friendship acceleration technique can help you compress that year or two in to a couple of months. [Click the Friendship Acceleration button below.]

Friendship Acceleration

The links Friendship Acceleration and Building the Friendship together describe friendship acceleration approach to consciously developing a friendship with another person to reach a point where you trust that person will correctly represent your wishes to medical personnel if it becomes necessary (and conversely if you are also going to serve as that person'a proxy).

The friendship acceleration idea can work with people who are initially complete strangers. But if possible, give yourself a running start. If you have a friend or an extended family member with whom you have a casual relationship, but who you can imagine that you might become closer to, then try first to apply this approach with that family member or friend.

You assumed I had a candidate! But I'm in #3! I don't have any candidates!