FRIENDS WITHOUT FAMILY...THERE ARE MANY HERE

Does Lakeside care provide in home assistance, and please provide approx. cost...pm would be great.

You should call and or talk to them as your friends needs may be a factor in the rate of pay. Yes, I believe they have in home care.

We are going to need 5 more units of blood. Fortunately, he is universal recipient....AB Positive....any blood type works. Please pm telephone # and I will set up transport.

Thanks Again

Jim W

Our friend is coming home today.....just received call from Deb....unfortunately, they have waited for over an hour for wheelchair @ Hospital Civil GDL....9th floor, and elevators are out of order.

Thank You all for your generous time and Blood donation.

Yes Sarah does home visits along with their own facility. If I had someone dropping in on me a few time a week ... she would be the one !!

http://www.lakesidecare.com/

That's wonderful Jim. If you want me to bring him something to eat just let me know and also what he likes. How in the world did he get down 9 floors without an elevator? Brute force of Mexican labor?

This ordeal sucks....Simpsca...he is sleeping on our couch...tonight...you sre most kind and generous.....and great person...Thank You for kind offer

espíritu del lago wrote:lakesidecare@yahoo.com

Ron & Sarah

045-331-410-8776

Jocotepec Jalisco

Thanks again....We checked him into there today...Ron and Sarah are great people....very caring...Thank You for your suggestion....we are hopeful he will spend a month and be on his own..

Jim n Deb

Abrria wrote:

Abrria wrote:I attended a presentation on 7/15, at LCS about the Jalisco law (?) (not sure if this law is only for Jalisco or a Federal one) about what we would call in the US, "Advanced Health Care Directive." I was very impressed by the work that was put into this. I would encourage people to look at this web site because it does deal with the medical issue that someone can be authorized to make health care decisions if you are incapacitated. Web site is: www.lakesidelifemanagement.org

IMHO those of us who live alone should have people check in on a regular basis to make sure we are OK. I feel that it is important to make available the names and phone numbers of those people who should be contacted in event of an emergency. It just makes things so much easier if our friends have this kind of info.

I just received an email that some (?) of the information presented at LCS was incorrect. As soon as I find out what the corrections are I will post them.

I very much welcome comments, questions or any information known by others.... this is a long-time learning effort on this topic!! (Also, I'm new to the webboard. I'm responding to the post of Abbria, but I'm wondering if the moderator will move this post to the legal section?? I'm not quite sure how this works yet!).

Lots of discussion points on that July 15th presentation.
Some good, valid, and usable information; but with other stuff that is misleading and confusing. A disclaimer was published on the LCS website and might still be there. I think it was to run for a couple of weeks.

First, the law is MX federal legislation. You can google "Decree reforming and adding to the General Health Law of Palliative Care Matters (DOF from 05 of January 2009).' Google will provide an English translation option. You can then verify that it is federal legislation by going to the bottom of the last page.

This is an important starting place to understand if the law is federal or Jalisco-specific because federal law supersedes state law. There was a lot of confusion from the very beginning because the authors published ads for their presentation referring to the "Jalisco Mexican Legislation....", and published an article in one of the periodicals that goes on to say the "newly presented law was undertaken by the Jalisco Mexican legislation." This confusion was raised on another webboard and the authors still did not seem to get the idea about the importance of knowing the difference between federal and state law.

Next discussion point(s). The authors title their document "A Guide to Advance[d] Care Planning for Foreigners in MEXICO," without making any distinction for Jalisco. It's important to understand that each Mexican state has it's own distinct state laws (just like in the US), even though the MX health care legislation is federal and supersedes state law.

Also, the authors state in their ads, including in the LCS health care week ads, that the new legislation provides for a "medical power of attorney." In a published article, they say that a "durable power of attorney for medical decisions" can now be chosen for expats living in Mexico. A statement of authorization is neither a medical power of attorney nor a durable power of attorney.

It was January 2010 when those of us working on these issues, including the authors, saw the MX federal legislation in print. By that time, Luis Ramos (Notario 2) had already proposed as of last summer a 'statement of authorization, that could include care directives.'

The reason for developing a Statement of Authorization was to have an alternative document to work-around Jalisco's laws in which all powers of attorney expire in 5 years and don't recognize 'durability' (which means that at the point of permanent mental incompetency or a persistant vegetative state, the power of attorney becomes invalid (you can check with Luis Ramos, Lic. Sergio Macias in Chapala, or any other local attorney). The other issue with that is that at the of the 5 year expiration, you must be mentally competent to get a new power of attorney (this could be a problem as we age and should happen to develop problems with alzheimer disease, have a stroke with long-term damage, and more).

Why understand the distinction between the Mexican states? While Jalisco doesn't recognize 'durability, there are 5 other MX states that do. They are Morelos, Mexico, San Luis Potosi, Guanajuato and Coahuila (which also specifically has a durable power of attorney for health).

The Statement of Authorization fits right in line with the new federal legislation which states, "Designate a relative, legal representative or a trusted person for the event, with the progress of the disease, is prevented from expressing their will to do so on their behalf" (this is translated from Spanish; Chapter II, Article 166, Bix 3, Paragraph X). It goes on to state "Any person of legal age, in full possession of his mental facilities, may at any time, regardless of their condition, express their will in writing before two witnesses, or not receiving any treatment, if that were to suffer an illness and be in a terminal situation [diagnosed with 6 months to live] and not be able to express that at any time" (Article 166 Bis 4).

So, the good part is that the Notario was right on target and the Statement of Authorization, with care directives, can serve as the document that is allowed in the federal legislation.

Here's where some of the questions come in. The legislation is relatively new and has not been tested in the Mexican court system (per Raoul Rodriquez who has researched this issue) and has not be run through private hospitals in Guadalajara which want their patients to stay as long as possible and remain 'hooked' up (there's more than one story lakeside on this issue). There's still lots of education to do because the law has been 'curative care,' not palliative care. The statement of authorization is not legally binding (which means that if the doctors or hospitals don't adhere to the patient's requests, nothing happens), but it does not expire and it is still valid when the person cannot make decisions for themselves WHEN IN A TERMINAL CONDITION with 6 months to live (according to the legislation). Will that be the situation for all of us? Who knows!

IS A DURABLE POWER OF ATTORNEY FOR MEDICAL DECISIONS needed? That's a really good question to ask an attorney who understands the 'durability' available in the other 5 MX states. Sergio Macias, along with Dr. Garcia, did a presentation at LCS on July 8, 2005, on Living Wills and Durable Powers of Attorney (you can find this on the LCS website under Living Wills). Lic. Macias indicates that durable powers of attorney from another MX state are valid in all of the MX states.

Durable powers of attorney may become useful for someone in an auto accident, or a variety of things where they cannot speak for themselves and need someone to act on their behalf for medical decisions. So, we then need to have an a friend or someone else who can act on our behalf (this is especially important is we are single, or live alone).

So to go with a 'durable power of attorney,' do we need to have a separate document stating what care we want or don't want, which would be similar to a living will? These things are still left up-in-the air with the new Mexican federal legislation.

We live in Jalisco (and many of us are here full-time). Can we get access to durable powers of attorney for health or anything else?? Yes, we can. There are two ways. One is to get the documents made in one of the MX states that recognizes durable powers of attorney (see the paper 'Living Wills' on the LCS website of Sergio Macias or talk to him directly). Lic Macias states that the documents are legally binding in all of the MX states. The other way to use American (or Canadian) documents from your state of origin. They have to go through an 'apostille' process (check on-line for information). It's easy, pretty inexpensive and can be recognized here (I have, for example, a US durable power of attorney for financial matters (apostilled and held at my financial institution in Ajijic) and a US durable power of attorney for health (which includes a living will), held by my Mexican general physician. As a back-up, I will also do a statement of authorization, but will not depend on that alone.

Filoli