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The form that I am filling out asks some hard questions.

Do I choose resuscitation or not? Do I permit a ventilator, feeding tubes, IV for fluids, or say no to those interventions? Should there be a trip to the hospital, or only when medically necessary, or if pain or severe symptoms can otherwise not be controlled? What about using antibiotics? Submitting to kidney dialysis?

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I am not answering these questions for myself, but rather for my husband, who has severe dementia and can no longer make these decisions.

It’s called a MOLST form, or Medical Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment. If you’ve never had to complete this questionnaire, or don’t know about it, then you have been lucky in your life. So far.

Created in early 2000s, MOLST is a more detailed set of advance directives than the 1980s DNR law, which was limited to people having heart attacks or who had stopped breathing. It’s used for people who live in long-term care facilities and who might die within the next year.

Since 2018, I’ve lived partially in a parallel universe, one that I call dementia-land. My husband, a professor and researcher at the Department of Neuroscience at Albany Medical College, was diagnosed that year with frontotemporal lobe dementia, or FTD. It’s the same disease the actor........

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