Family and Grief
QUESTION: Explain the different ways members of the same family experience grief. Grief is a lot of emotions rolled into one package. Each person will experience and show these emotions...
Something to Think About: a blog on end of life
Other People Die!
In the months before a gradual death we really don’t believe death will happen to us or to those we love. In the days to weeks before gradual death occurs...
Sleep
QUESTION: “What about the lack of desire to do anything but sleep?” When a person has entered the dying process three things begin to happen: their eating decreases, sleep increases...
Life is a Terminal Illness
From the moment we are born we begin to die. We are born, we experience and then we die. All the space between birth and death is living yet we...
Family Contact
QUESTION: Working in Hospice, I always had a terrible time with ---Do I stay in contact with the family after visitation or not? ANSWER: I think staying in contact with...
Family Guidance
I recently received a question from “What would you like me to write about?”. The question was: For 20 years I have been asking for a slightly more technical explanation...
What is Terminal Restlessness?
Terminal restlessness is a medical term for the restlessness and agitation that often begins one to three weeks before death from disease. The restlessness shows itself by random body movements,...
QUESTION: How do you help a family?
QUESTION: “How do you help a family go through the dying process?”. Because we don’t have accurate role models on what happens when a person is dying, we generally approach...
A question about vomitting
QUESTION: Why didn’t you write about the vomiting that occurred18 hours before my husband died? I am sorry your husband had what appears to be an unusual yet not abnormal...
Palliative Sedation
The question, "Will you discuss palliative sedation?" has come up several times so I am putting my response in this section rather than the Comments. Palliative Sedation is a term...
The Gift of Time
I, Barbara, am not afraid of being dead. I have a belief system that says “When you are dead you are in a better place.” I also think being dead...