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
CLEAR ALL
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.
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.”
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.
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.
Is a “good death” just an oxymoron? Or can the experience of death be far more positive—an opportunity for growth and meaning?
When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death.
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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.
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.
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.
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.