By Jane E. Brody — 2007
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.”
Read on www.nytimes.com
CLEAR ALL
For many of us, thinking about death—our own, or that of anyone we love—is supremely difficult. So, most of the time, we don’t think about it at all—until we have no choice.
“Zen practice … requires great faith, great courage, and great questioning.”
I learned about a lot of things in medical school, but mortality wasn’t one of them. Although I was given a dry, leathery corpse to dissect in anatomy class in my first term, our textbooks contained almost nothing about aging or frailty or dying.
"But now we’re asked — and sometimes forced — to carry grief as a solitary burden. And the psyche knows we are not capable of handling grief in isolation." - Francis Weller
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The mismatch between the knowledge and the longing is perhaps the most anguishing of all human experiences.
The truth is that many of us just don’t know the right words to comfort someone who is dying.
If a person or loved one is elderly or has a terminal illness, knowing death may be near is often difficult to deal with or comprehend. Understanding what to expect may make things a little easier.
The five stages of coping with dying (DABDA), were first described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her classic book, "On Death and Dying," in 1969.
This is a general picture. Individual experiences are unique and influenced by many factors, such as the particular illness and the types of medications being taken, but there are some physical changes that are fairly common.
Crossroads Hospice & Palliative Care created guidelines to help family caregivers better understand the physical changes of the end-of-life process, as well as the emotional and spiritual end-of-life changes taking place.