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Terminal Options for the Irreversibly Ill

By Jane E. Brody — 2008

My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.

Read on www.nytimes.com

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An Introduction to the Death-Positive Movement

In most modern cultures, it’s common for people to feel uneasy about death. We express this discomfort by avoiding conversations on the topic and lowering our voices when speaking of the dead and dying.

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Advice on Dire Diagnoses From a Survivor

With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”

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A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit

Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.

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Alternatives for the Final Disposition

Though I wince at the redundancy, funeral “pre-planning” is a phenomenon receiving increased attention, and a growing number of Web-based guides tell how to go about it. As www.funerals.org puts it: “Funeral planning starts at home.

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What Cancer Takes Away

When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death.

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When Your Fears About Dying Are Unhealthy

The fear of death and dying is quite common, and most people fear death to varying degrees. To what extent that fear occurs and what it pertains to specifically varies from one person to another.

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What a Doctor Wishes Patients Knew About the End

Both providers and patients do have power to shape their experience together, especially if they take the time to have a few crucial conversations. In the spirit of palliation, here are a few things, as a physician, I wish I could share more often with patients and their caregivers.

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My Own Life

A month ago, I felt that I was in good health, even robust health. At 81, I still swim a mile a day. But my luck has run out—a few weeks ago I learned that I have multiple metastases in the liver.

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Mindful Death

Facing our own mortality can be uncomfortable and, for some, distressing. But when we befriend death—when we approach death mindfully—its force doesn’t necessarily derail us in the same way.

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What the Living Can Learn from the Dying

Sean Illing and Frank Ostaseski discuss what Ostaseski has learned from the conversations he’s had with the dying.

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EXPLORE TOPIC

Death and Dying