Goals

I am working on a research project on health care decision making (again - another one.) Part of this one was interviewing a couple of dozen experts - I was intimidated by the thought of interviewing a professor at Harvard Medical School, and she was the nicest person you would ever want to chat with - if I was dying, I'd like her as my doctor.  

One of the topics was helping patients develop and articulate goals of care.  As an example I talked about my experience three years ago.  When asked what my goals were, I was clueless.  I said, Well I'd like to survive.  And I was asked, "then what?  Go home, "then what? To which my answer was in "90 days I want to fly to Germany and ride on a Zeppelin."  That usually resulted in the person asking me about my goals, looking in the chart for what meds I was on, or to see if a psychiatric exam had been ordered. One of the doctors came back the next day and said, "I did a google search, you were serious!"  Yes, I knew I needed to be well enough to walk 150 feet across the grass, and climb 6 steps unaided to ride the Zeppelin, that was my intermediate goal.  And I made it.  If you are curious, there is a link to the You-Tube video of the Zeppelin ride on the right hand side of my blog.   

So what is your goal of care?