Health Care Proxy
All adults should have a living will and a legal designation of a medical agent who can act in your behalf if you are unable to speak for yourself. The Massachusetts form for designating such a proxy, along with examples of living wills, can be downloaded as an Adobe pdf file from the national website of Compassion and Choices: http://www.compassionandchoices.org/ad/. This will give you an excellent discussion of the whole subject, plus the needed forms. You are urged to download this 20 page document for your personal use. If you are unable to do this, you can telephone Compassion and Choices of Greater Boston (see "contact us") and a copy will be mailed to you.
To execute the documents, no lawyer or notary public is required, only two witnesses