Something to Think About

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...

What do I personally think? If we want to die, VSED is a way of having total control. It is not illegal. It doesn’t involve others (which is illegal). It...

...There is no perfect relationship. There are good times and difficult times. Sometimes the difficulty we have with the person that is dying keeps us from being at the bedside....

 If we did not relate to praying in living then we will not necessarily relate now. We die the way we have lived. We don’t change who we are just...

I do not think there is a need for narcotics just because death is approaching. Dying is not painful. Disease causes pain...

Most families are stressed, tempers can flare, nerves get frayed. It is up to us, as professionals, to use our communication skills to ease the tensions...

Sometimes when we think that others think we are not doing enough, it may actually be us thinking that the others are not doing enough. When the worker bee caregiver...

Death for those who work in end of life is not failureor the enemy. It is the ending of the work we do. Our satisfaction in thedeath of a patient...

It is not too late to examine the lesson, to rethink your reaction to it and to put all those tormented thoughts and feelings to rest. I am not expecting...

In normal grieving, time begins to lessen the intensity of the emotional pain of our loss. There is a process to grief (see My Friend, I Care) and although we never forget...

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, 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...

I was just on the phone with a woman who told me the doctor told her friend he was surprised she had lived this long with the disease having spread...

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...

Now, all this said, there are thin lines and points to debate, in what istreatment to get better and treatment for comfort. Is pneumonia related to alife threatening illness or...

Where is medicine that treats PEOPLE that have diseases? Where is medicine that looks at the PERSON and finds out how they want to live and die based upon their...

First, lets define “No Code”. The simplest explanation I found was Googled from the Free Dictionary http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/no+code“a note written in the patient record and signed by a qualified, usually senior or...

We are generally very tired, physically and emotionally, by the time our caregiving is over. Our thinking processes are not what we are used to. We are tired, weepy, aimless,...

Because we don’t really think about end of life care until we or someone close to us needs it we enter into relationships with hospice that may not be satisfactory...

...The end of life avocation that hospice originally presented is becoming a gift of the past. Now it is a business with high censuses, detailed and often confusing regulations, and...

Dear Barbara, I recently had a meeting with a family that was referred to hospice from a facility. They had about 10 family members at the meeting. The topic of...