Mar 142012
Preparing for death
Feb 292012
I believe in healing and I believe in healing at the end of life. I have personally experienced healing in relationships, in terms of my sense of myself. Emotional healing, relational healing, psychological healing: all these partake of the spiritual insofar as they relate to the meaning we make and the meaning we find in Read more . . .
Feb 212012
What do people with advanced cancer, congestive heart failure and end stage renal disease have in common? According to researchers, they all testify to the importance of emotional and spiritual issues when facing the end of life: not surprising for many of us. What is interesting is that people said this kind of thing whether Read more . . .
Feb 102012
Guest Contributor: Viki Kind 4. Think about the kind of death you are choosing. With CPR, you might not have the opportunity for a peaceful and profound death experience. When you picture the last minutes of your loved one’s life, do you see strangers straddling the patient on a bed, pushing on the patient’s chest, Read more . . .
Feb 072012
Guest Contributor: Viki Kind CPR or cardiopulmonary resuscitation used to be very simple to understand. Cardio stands for heart, pulmonary stands for lungs and resuscitation means to revive from death. When a patient died, someone would push on the person’s chest to try to restart the heart while giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to help the person Read more . . .
Jan 312012
She was a very savvy, determined woman who had been a medical professional and served on a variety of boards and committees. We’ll call her Joan. Yet, for all her intelligence and savvy, as Joan lay near death in a palliative care ward after battling cancer for 11 years, with a house in her name Read more . . .
Dec 202011
In the face of death, many of us find ourselves tongue-tied—and in some cases that may be just as well, because lapses into either pat answers or false comforts are generally regrettable. It is, however, a fact that really listening to others, including people who are dying, is one of the most profound gifts we Read more . . .
Dec 022011
Visiting someone who is dying or critically ill is an experience many of us will have in the course of our lives. Whether your visit is to be in the person’s home, a hospice or a hospital, there are a few rules of thumb to guide your time together so that it can be mutually Read more . . .
Nov 082011
The use of narcotic drugs in end of life care continues to be debated. On the one side, opiates are seen as addictive substances with criminal usage associations that might wrongly alter a dying person’s experience of reality. On the other side, opiates are seen as the most effective pain controllers available to us, the Read more . . .
Oct 252011
My father died quietly in his sleep at the age of 85 while still in his own home and able to manage most of his own affairs. This would be about as close to a good death as I, at least, could imagine. I might wish it for myself and for anyone I care about. Read more . . .