On the freezer door in my kitchen, there’s an index card held in place with a bright red magnet. In bold, black letters, I’ve written an important reminder on it: “Make a ‘When I Die’ file.” I should point out that I’m not terminally ill, just highly organized. I was...
While Jewish tradition maintains that human life is of infinite value and that its preservation and extension overrides virtually every other religious imperative, relieving pain and allowing for the soul’s peaceful departure are also values well-established in Jewish...
My 92-year-old father fell one Saturday night a few months ago. My mother could not pick him up. Her brother was not answering his cellphone, so she called 911. An ambulance crew brought him to the hospital. I took the first flight from Washington, D.C., and arrived...
There are a lot of articles out there telling you how to talk to your family about death as if it’s a complicated thing to do that requires special care and attention. It doesn’t. I wonder about the personal lives of the people who write advice about...
No one wants to think about end-of-life care, but it remains an unavoidable inevitability for all of us. Caregivers often face the unenviable task of preparing for the death of a loved one during the last months of their lives, and it can be difficult to know where to...
By JoNel Aleccia The 90-year-old woman in the San Diego-area nursing home was quite clear, said Dr. Karl Steinberg. She didn’t want aggressive measures to prolong her life. If her heart stopped, she didn’t want CPR. But when Steinberg, a palliative care physician,...
By JoNel Aleccia Bill Harris is blunt: For more than a year, he has been trying to help his wife die. The 75-year-old retired tech worker says it’s his duty to Nora Harris, his spouse of nearly four decades, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s disease in...
Before my sister was struck by frontotemporal dementia, her wishes were very clear. No feeding tube or breathing machine if she became profoundly incapacitated, without the prospect of recovery. No aggressive life-sustaining measures. And she wanted to stay in her...
End-of-life counseling sessions, once decried by some conservative Republicans as “death panels,” gained steam among Medicare patients in 2016, the first year doctors could charge the federal program for the service. Nearly 14,000 providers billed almost $35 million...
John was a highly successful civil engineer and a loving husband. He was by nature a real go-getter. And so when his wife was told that she would need complicated heart surgery for a dysfunctional heart valve, he went into full throttle. They arranged to have her...
I spend a lot of time thinking about hospice care these days. As my husband’s health declined it was as if we could hear the clock ticking more loudly. All the plans we’d made for growing old, the life we’d imagined, was not going to happen. If our...
I once tried to make a list of the things we respond to from the day we are born, and one of the first ways we bond with a parental figure is by communicating our feelings through tears or laughter. Mother and father then have to listen carefully to how we make...
One of the hardest jobs in the world is being a caregiver to a terminally ill loved one. You want to take away their pain and bring joy back into their bodies, but many times are unable to do so. When modern medicine can no longer treat patients with late stage...
Ediccia wanted to be remembered as someone who didn’t give up. Chuck said some of his favorite times were playing baseball with his brothers. Joe said he was the luckiest man in the world. Abel summed it up this way: “You have a one-way ticket. Don’t waste it!” They...
A recent interview study has uncovered factors that may contribute to the use of potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) at the end of life. Limited awareness may contribute to physicians’ practice of not discussing the discontinuation of PIMs at the end of life....
MU researcher finds only 10 clinical trials conducted in hospices since 1985, says more studies could improve patient care Randomized controlled trials often are considered the gold standard of research studies that help guide the medical care of patients across the...
In a perfect world, patients with advance directives would be confident that their doctors and nurses — no matter where they receive care — could know in a split second their end-of-life wishes. But this ideal is still in the distance. Patients’ documents often go...
Alia Indrawan is an integrative healing practitioner and intuitive guide based in Bali, Indonesia. She has previously worked as a Hospice Nurse, helping people with terminal illness to die gracefully and in peace. She has taken the lessons she’s learned from...
Those who work with the dying are familiar with patients seeing long deceased loved ones, angelic beings, even hearing music and comforting voices as the patient nears death. Deathbed phenomena have been documented in the days, weeks, and months before death since the...
LOS ANGELES — More times than she can count, Dr. Carin van Zyl has heard terminally ill patients beg to die. They tell her they can’t handle the pain, that the nausea is unbearable and the anxiety overwhelming. If she were in the same situation, she too would want...
What kind of care do you want at the end of your life? Stanford University researchers put that question to members of three major ethnic groups in the San Francisco Bay area and found little variation in their responses. “There is a common humanity – people want to...
Researchers seek solutions to increase shared decision-making among terminally ill While there is vast research on shared decision-making between patients and providers, little research exists on how providers and family caregivers reach mutual decisions — a dynamic...
Healthcare expenditure is the biggest threat to America’s economy, due to an aging population and a system in which physicians are often paid based on what they do to their patients, rather than fostering a patient’s overall quality of life. Dr. Timothy...
Twice already Narseary and Vernal Harris have watched a son die. The first time — Paul, at age 26 — was agonizing and frenzied, his body tethered to a machine meant to keep him alive as his incurable sickle cell disease progressed. When the same illness ravaged...
When Annie looked up at me from her hospital bed and said, “Please take me home–I don’t want to die in the hospital.” With those words, Annie reserved, and deserved the right to die at home. Annie had five core wishes when diagnosed with...
With “End of Life” care swirling around in news releases these days, and from all the information I’ve read, I was wondering how many of you actually know what end of life care is and “when it starts.” It’s a valid question, one...
It may sound crazy, but if there was ever a time to employ the cliché, “Stop and smell the roses,” it is when taking care of a loved one who is dying. Family caregivers can become so preoccupied with monitoring, managing, and documenting their loved one’s...
Joy’s piece on her experience caring for her mother as she died at home got a huge reaction. Our community members have had dramatically different experiences taking care of someone in their final hours. Here are some of the things they shared: Get help My...
If you haven’t read Hospice Party Part 1, perhaps you should, as this article, Hospice Party Part 2, will put the article in perspective and lead to an understanding and education for some. Let The Conversation Begin–End of Life Care I knew I was being a...
In the beginning when Annie was diagnosed with terminal cancer, I, like most people didn’t know what to expect. Her diagnosis was so awful, it didn’t leave much room for any good thoughts to flow into my imagination. But I now know the truth. Even when our...
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