Something to Think About
a blog on end of life
My husband Jack has been dead eight months. In processing the five months from his diagnosis to his death, what stands out most for me is the tension that surrounded food....
Know that all of these signs of approaching death, whether indicating months or weeks, are just guideposts. Some people will show all of them...
People don’t die like they do in the movies—alive one minute, saying something profound and dead the next. There is a way that the body dies. A way it is...
There are many of the same circumstances with today’s coronavirus as we faced with HIV/AIDS in the early years— lack of medical knowledge, lack of guidance, and fear. I think...
Isolation from others is teaching me this about my self ——- I do a lot for others, for their thoughts of me, why else do I wear makeup? Get dressed?...
You have to walk the walk before you can talk the talk. Learn from your patient/family interactions. At the same time read everything you can get your hands on...
Dementia isn’t a terminal illness in that it doesn’t have a limited prognosis. It is like dying from old age, it takes longer. Alzheimer’s, or any form of dementia, is...
When hospice began it was outside of the medical model. It provided end of life care based on quality, not quantity, of life. It recognized when physical healing couldn't be...
When living with a life threatening illness we are eating for two---our physical body and our disease. In most cases the disease eats before we do. If we don’t eat,...
There are other signs of approaching death that indicate a person with a disease (at any age) has weeks to live...
I can say that dementia doesn’t play by the rules for end of life. Withdrawing and sleeping can be present for years and does not signify approaching death. Not eating...
My message throughout all this time has been to educate, educate, educate. Educate anyone who will listen about how people die. To help people understand how death comes, what it...
From the moment of a diagnosis of a life threatening illness we begin grieving. We grieve not just the eventual losses that come with serious illness but the approaching death...
...not telling a person they can’t be fixed is taking away their opportunity to do and say that which is important to them. It is taking away their ability to...
As a person enters the dying process, months before death occurs, they will gradually stop eating. Months before death they will stop eating meats, then fruits and vegetables, then soft...
If she has had no water of any kind for 16 days I would expect her to die at anytime--maybe before I write this.
Dear Barbara, what are the physical changes in appearance during the dying process? Also talk about not forcing food upon the dying. The physical changes in appearance during the dying...
The process of a gradual death from disease takes two to four months (old age with no disease takes longer). Three things are the sign posts that say the dying...
As death comes closer we tend to see that families have a hard time with the fact that the patient does NOT want to eat or drink. Not wanting to...
We have all sorts of fears around dying and death so we keep thoughts of end of life at bay. We are like ostriches who bury their heads in the...
Mary Nell’s son in law, Ted, sent me this writing. It is so poignant I asked him if I could share it with my blog readers. It is longer than...
