I was in the emergency room a few years ago for extreme pain in my abdomen. Someone came to see me and said she was an advocate but it was all noise to me at the time. I don’t remember seeing or hearing from her again.

I’ve never encountered one, so far as I know. I haven’t been in the hospital much, but my husband was. I was the one who did all that on his behalf. He couldn’t have done it himself, and in his place I couldn’t have either.

I wrote everything down in a thick notebook: names, dates, details of consultations, test data, treatments, home care, everything. There’s no way I could have done it by memory. Even if he’d had a formally designated advocate, I still would have kept my own notes. Hope I can do something like that for myself when my turn comes.

Even better would be to have someone else do it for me, but I wouldn’t feel confident relying on someone for whom I’m an undistinguished one of dozens of clients who make up a workday agenda. So I hope someone locates and looks at my AMD.