Something to Think About

“We want to give loved ones who are sick or dying everything we think they want — but we can’t,” said Barbara Karnes, 78, an end-of-life educator and hospice nurse...

If home health is involved in dying -- even when not the result of a clinically-driven decision -- they have to know how to take care of both patient and...

“Am I dying?” she asked.“We think so,” I said, touching her manicured fingernails. “I am here with you.” Later, she kept her eyes closed but opened them when we talked....

  Guilt seems to come with loss. We burden ourselves with questions we can never answer, with “what if ” and “why didn’t I”. We repeatedly berate ourselves with “I...

Longtime hospice nurse Barbara Karnes, for instance, advises those approaching their deaths to not put things off until a day or hour when they are feeling better. Assume, she suggests,...