The Words We Use When It Comes to Death
Our job as end of life workers is to educate. We walk a thin line. Our words can be heard and misunderstood so easily. They can be interpreted differently than...
Something to Think About: a blog on end of life
Suicide
End of Life Patients Who Are Thinking about Suicide
If I think my patient is having thoughts of suicide, we will talk about it. Is there a plan? Are they just questioning life and dying or have they reached...
Supporting Survivors of Suicide Loss
Part of normal grief is all the questions we will never have answers to, the whys and what if’s? With death by suicide those questions are ten fold. With a...
How Do You Grieve a Violent Death?
Sudden death by accident, suicide and certainly by violence intensifies those normal grief responses. Everything we feel with normal grief is as if we are being held under a magnifying...
THIS IS HOW PEOPLE DIE - my latest film
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...
The Nursing Home Blues
As we get older, life presents us with different challenges. We adapt to them in the same way we have lived our life and dealt with all the challenges in...
Unexpected Death of a Child
Dear Barbara, Please talk about unexpected youth death. In our minds we understand, that as sad as it is when an older adult dies,they have lived their life and death...
Dangers of Morphine for the Dying
Dear Barbara, Talk about the dangers of giving morphine to one who is dying? I have written many articles on morphine yet I repeatedly get this question. What that tells...
The "Do Over"
Then one day I got a phone call saying the baby was found dead in its crib---SIDS Only we didn’t call it Sudden Infant Death Syndrome then. It was just...
Suicide Thoughts and End of Life
QUESTIONS: Suicide Obviously this is a very big subject and I can’t begin to cover it so I will just address suicide in relation to end of life issues. I've...
Thoughts of Suicide
Most people diagnosed with a life threatening illness think about suicide. Suicidal thoughts are normal thoughts in someone who has been told they can’t be fixed. We think about it...
I Just Want to Die
Frequently I will hear a person say “I am ready to die,” “I just want to die,” “Why am I not dead yet?” or “Why is this taking so long?”...