“I refuse to have a terrible death”

The rise of the death wellness movement

“Death doulas,” dinner parties, and conversation-starters all have the same goal: to help Americans emotionally embrace their own mortality.

By Rina Raphael

Dying as one wishes has become a luxury. Even though 70% of people would prefer to die at home surrounded by loved ones, most forfeit their future to a windowless hospital room, attached to tubes and monitors. What was once a homebound stage of life has become a lonely, sterilized experience with a host of unfamiliar faces. America, a country founded on rugged individualism and freedom, can’t accommodate even the simplest of last choices.

“Too many people die clinical deaths,” says Beth McGroarty, vice president of research and forecasting for the Global Wellness Summit.

The Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to healthy living, identified an emerging trend gaining traction among multiple U.S. age groups. It’s death wellness, in which healthcare experts, academics, and spiritual leaders welcome us to confront anxiety about eternal rest, as well as learn how to support the individual and family throughout the dying process.

Also called the “death positive movement,” it encompasses events, workshops, and new modes of care. Death doulas (sometimes dubbed death midwives) coach those on their deathbed; death cafes gather the morbidly curious to discuss their fears; and legacy projects force the dying to communicate their will and essence. An entire cottage industry has stepped in to make people more prepared to accept their finality, establishing itself as an alternative to the medical establishment’s gaps in care. A good death, some will say, is now part of a good life.

“Everything around dying is getting radically rethought–from making the experience more humane to mourning and funerals getting reimagined,” notes the Global Wellness Institute in its 2019 wellness trends report.

Baby boomers, who invented the wellness industry with their insistence on aging differently, currently lead the movement. They still exercise, listen to rock music, and value their independence. (They also control approximately 70% of all disposable income.) As such, notes McGroarty, their last chapter shouldn’t be any different: “They are basically saying, ‘I refuse to have a terrible death.’”

A break with history

In the 19th century, Americans died in their own homes, which also hosted their wakes and funerals. The Victorian era was obsessed with dying and mourning; numerous rituals memorialized the deceased and absorbed the grieving period. In fact, it was customary to observe the body for up to three days to ensure the dead didn’t wake from a “deep sleep” prior to burial.

A Victorian-era advertisements for mourning garb.

That changed in the early 20th century, when more hospitals were being built due to advances in the medical field. Over time, specialized medicine replaced the family doctor. Families no longer saw loved ones day in and day out until the end. The process was outsourced to medical institutions, where patients lacked the emotional and spiritual care previously afforded their predecessors. Death became less familiar and people became more disconnected.

Doctors now concentrate on delaying death and managing pain, with few trained in end-of-life conversations. One survey found that half of medical students and residents report being underprepared to address patient concerns and fears at the end of life. “We train vigorously on how to delay the onset of death, and are judged on how well we do that, but many of us get little training on how to confront death,” Junaid Nabi, MD, a physician and medical journalist, recently wrote.

To that end, hospice care was meant to support those battling terminal diagnoses. But in reality, hospice care workers–along with chaplains, social workers, and religious leaders–have little time to tend to the dying. Hospice workers have basically become comfort care, spending just a few hours each week with individual patients. Factor in the loss of religious rituals and cultural practices, and that leaves humanity with little framework on how to console the dying.

Americans might avoid dealing with death for other reasons. We are fixated–near obsessed–with wellness and living. Anti-aging rituals, biohacking, and Silicon Valley’s mission to “overcome death” have induced a frenzy which categorizes death as a failure of sorts.

In her book Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, author Barbara Ehrenreich bemoans society’s newfound addiction to betterment and medical intervention, a false sense of control that she argues makes dying all the more painful and humiliating. We are anxious about death, paralyzing our ability to actually deal with it.

“You can age ‘successfully’ if you do everything that you’re told, and that dying itself [can] be postponed further and further and further away if again you adhere to all the rules of diet, exercise, medical care, etc.,” argues Ehrenreich. “And that’s a cultural illusion, I would say. We do not control our own health completely.”

The rise of death doulas

Enter the death doula. Introduced in 2003, death doulas, much like birth doulas, fill a gap–in this case, between medical care and hospice care. They emotionally support patients before, during, and after death. Their popularity has soared. The International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA), a nonprofit that offers online programs and weekend workshops, has trained more than 2,000 individuals as well nearly a dozen hospital staffs in under three years in the U.S. Its programs routinely sell out.

INELDA trains individuals how to intently listen to patients and meaningfully discuss death, along with how to develop “a vigil plan” (a blueprint, more or less) for their last days. That might entail everything from where they envision themselves resting to what music or poems they want recited. The doulas spend several hours a day talking to their patients about how they feel about all the oncoming changes, both emotionally and physically. As such, they might institute guided imagery for pain management and personalized rituals. The latter can sometimes be as simple as implementing meditative, silent moments.

Trainees are also taught “active vigiling,” which is support for when the person is dying. The doulas are there to calm the patient and inform the family about signs to expect. “We don’t really understand death and dying anymore in our society,” says INELDA president Janie Rakow. “So people get very fearful at what they see, like breathing changes.”

The doulas are there as much for the dying as they are for the surrounding loved ones. Throughout the dying process, they check in with family members to alleviate their stress. Once the patient has died, they guide the surviving members through the grief process, educating them on the emotional stages to expect and how to practice self-soothing.

The majority of death doulas are volunteers, but a portion are available for hire. Prices range depending on care–they might charge anywhere from $30 to $100 an hour, or up to a few thousand dollars per week. Some work with a family for a few days a week, whereas others might engage in round-the-clock care for the last days.

Today, the death doula is evolving from a niche status in the care community and infiltrating mainstream medicine. The National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization recently formed an End-of-Life Doula Council, and it’s now even acknowledged at the academic level. In 2017, the University of Vermont Larner College of Medicine started the End-of-Life Doula Professional Certificate Program. The eight-week online course teaches students how to “honor the wholeness of a person in their journey,” says program director Francesca Arnoldy, author of Cultivating the Doula Heart: Essentials of Compassionate Care.

Like INELDA, the University of Vermont program focuses on the importance of legacy projects. The doulas collaborate with patients on artifacts, be it a recipe book, a scrapbook, or an audio recording, which speak to who that person is. Doulas act as scribes or mediators, pushing patients to review and find meaning in their lives.

So far, those registered mostly span the medical professional field, such as doctors, nurses, mental health workers, as well as spiritual care providers. They also get family caretakers who want more support tools. Following certification, some are hired by hospitals to complement hospice workers, but most serve as unpaid volunteers.

“We can’t keep up with our waitlist,” Arnoldy says of skyrocketing interest in the program. “The last time we opened up registration, the applicants crashed our system.”

Talk therapy

Nothing is certain except death and taxes, and yet our society only ever really talks about the latter. A California HealthCare Foundation survey found that 82% of people say it’s important to write down their end-of-life wishes, yet only 23% do so. And nearly 80% say they should talk to their doctor about end-of-life care–only 7% ever do.

A large theme of death wellness involves simply talking about the hushed-about matter. Festivals, dinner gatherings, and newly founded websites aim to strip death of its taboo status. Reimagine End of Life, for example, is a week-long series of events in San Francisco that delves into the topic through the arts, design, and performances. Though clearly about death, it bills itself as a “celebration of life.”

The Go Wish card game invites players to discuss how they envision end-of-life care options. They rate the importance of statements such as, “not being connected to machines.” The object of the game? “To help you voice these choices.”

There are numerous organizations facilitating hard conversations. Death Cafe, a program which brings people together to “eat cake, drink tea, and discuss death,” has had more than 8,200 events in 65 countries since 2011. Likewise, Death Over Dinner, a nonprofit that organizes shared meals for people to embrace their own mortality, facilitated more than 200,000 dinners, translating to nearly a million people served.

“The more challenging, the more taboo the topic, the more potential there is for transformation and human connection,” says Michael Hebb, founder of Death Over Dinner. “[In America] we have this perfect storm of a broken system that could be improved by open conversation.”

Death Over Dinner attempts to normalize death, giving people the tools to discuss it frankly over some roasted chicken. The online platform provides a customizable script for hosts to engage their guests, most of whom are middle-aged or boomers. The program is partnering with the Cleveland Clinic, in addition to large-scale events with Memorial Sloan Kettering. Most dinners are sponsored by health organizations or religious groups, which welcome guests free-of-charge.

The dinners don’t just attract boomers or those inching closer to the ticking clock. Death Over Dinner sees interest among millennials, who are “incredibly passionate about this conversation,” reports Hebb. Millennials even have their own salon series called The Dinner Party, which coordinates potluck meals centered on death and grief.Lennon Flowers, executive director of The Dinner Party, sees a generation rallying against a “conspiracy of silence” that stripped them of any outlet to discuss the topic. Should someone in their 20s or 30s suffer a family member’s death–or be faced with a terminal diagnosis–the person often had only support groups to turn to. Generally, those consist of much older individuals.

“The reality is they might not go back [to the support group],” explains Flowers. “When you’re the first among your peer group to experience loss, that kind of compounds the isolation and loneliness.” They are perhaps the first in their community to experience loss, but they can’t find adequate support in their own social circles. The Dinner Party aims to fill that role. Since 2014, The Dinner Party grew to 4,000 members who meet regularly at 235 tables. It fields over 100 new member submissions per week.

The beginning of a movementWhile death wellness is mostly an awareness and support movement, some startups have begun commodifying what a “good death” might feel or look like. Megilla, for example, is an online video recording program for the elderly. Described as “legacy-building for the modern age,” the site features more than 500 questions meant to encapsulate a person’s values, hobbies, and stories.

Founder Nathan Firer, a former TV producer,  previously filmed the elderly for posterity projects, which ran about $5,000 to $7,000 per client. It wasn’t terribly affordable, not to mention he noticed that clients were usually uncomfortable with being filmed. With Megilla, users can privately answer questions from the comfort of their laptop for $5 a month.

But for the most part, the death wellness movement is made up of volunteers and medical practitioners who have seen firsthand the shortcomings of contemporary end-of-life care. Death Over Dinner’s Hebb sees the pendulum swinging back from medicalization toward a more holistic attitude of death. It’s hit the cultural zeitgeist, he says, “but I think we’re still just at the very beginning.” Awareness of death wellness may be spreading, but its services are still not available in most hospitals, and they are generally not covered by insurance.

In the meantime, those advancing the movement are adjusting best practices for a modern, stressed society. “When you hide something away or when you forget how to do something, there’s a whole lot of wisdom that’s left behind,” says Hebb. “It’s just not a medical act; it’s a human, community act. People are feeling more and more empowered to take back some ownership over these decisions.”

Complete Article HERE!

Life after death

Americans are embracing new ways to leave their remains

Green burials can save consumers money, and have nurtured a market for biodegradable urns and coffins.

By

What do you want to happen to your remains after you die?

For the past century, most Americans have accepted a limited set of options without question. And discussions of death and funeral plans have been taboo.

That is changing. As a scholar of funeral and cemetery law at Wake Forest University, I’ve discovered that Americans are becoming more willing to have a conversation about their own mortality and what comes next and embrace new funeral and burial practices.

Baby boomers are insisting upon more control over their funeral and disposition so that their choices after death match their values in life. And businesses are following suit, offering new ways to memorialize and dispose of the dead.

While some options such as Tibetan sky burial — leaving human remains to be picked clean by vultures — and “Viking” burial via flaming boat — familiar to “Game of Thrones” fans — remain off limits in the U.S., laws are changing to allow a growing variety of practices.

‘American Way of Death’

In 1963, English journalist and activist Jessica Mitford published “The American Way of Death,” in which she described the leading method of disposing of human remains in the United States, still in use today.

She wrote that human remains are temporarily preserved by replacing blood with a formaldehyde-based embalming fluid shortly after death, placed in a decorative wood or metal casket, displayed to family and friends at the funeral home and buried within a concrete or steel vault in a grave, perpetually dedicated and marked with a tombstone.

Mitford called this “absolutely weird” and argued that it had been invented by the American funeral industry, which emerged at the turn of the 20th century. As she wrote in The Atlantic:

“Foreigners are astonished to learn that almost all Americans are embalmed and publicly displayed after death. The practice is unheard of outside the United States and Canada.”

Nearly all Americans who died from the 1930s, when embalming became well-established, through the 1990s were disposed of in this manner.

And it’s neither cheap or good for the environment. The median cost of a funeral and burial, including a vault to enclose the casket, was $8,508 in 2014. Including the cost of the burial plot, the fee for opening and closing the grave and the tombstone easily brings the total cost to $11,000 or more.

This method also consumes a great deal of natural resources. Each year, we bury 800,000 gallons of formaldehyde-based embalming fluid, 115 million tons of steel, 2.3 billion tons of concrete and enough wood to build 4.6 million single-family homes.

Mitford’s book influenced generations of Americans, beginning with the baby boomers, to question this type of funeral and burial. As a result, demand for alternatives such as home funerals and green burials have increased significantly. The most common reasons cited are a desire to connect with and honor their loved ones in a more meaningful way, and interest in lower-cost, less environmentally damaging choices.

Rise of cremation

The most radical change to how Americans handle their remains has been the rising popularity of cremation by fire. Cremation is less expensive than burial and, although it consumes fossil fuels, is widely perceived to be better for the environment than burial in a casket and vault.

Although cremation became legal in a handful of states in the 1870s and 1880s, its usage in the U.S. remained in single digits for another century. After steadily rising since the 1980s, cremation was the disposition method of choice for nearly half of all deaths in the U.S. in 2015. Cremation is most popular in urban areas, where the cost of burial can be quite high, in states with a lot of people born in other ones and among those who do not identify with a particular religious faith.

Residents of western states like Nevada, Washington and Oregon opt for cremation the most, with rates as high as 76 percent. Mississippi, Alabama and Kentucky have the lowest rates, at less than a quarter of all burials. The National Funeral Directors Association projects that by 2030 the nationwide cremation rate will reach 71 percent.

Cremation’s dramatic rise is part of a huge shift in American funerary practices away from burial and the ritual of embalming the dead, which is not required by law in any state but which most funeral homes require in order to have a visitation. In 2017, a survey of the personal preferences of Americans aged 40 and over found that more than half preferred cremation. Only 14 percent of those respondents said they would like to have a full funeral service with viewing and visitation prior to cremation, down from 27 percent as recently as 2015.

Part of the reason for that shift is cost. In 2014, the median cost of a funeral with viewing and cremation was $6,078. In contrast, a “direct cremation,” which does not include embalming or a viewing, can typically be purchased for $700 to $1,200.

Cremated remains can be buried in a cemetery or stored in an urn on the mantle, but businesses also offer a bewildering range of options for incorporating ashes into objects like glass paperweights, jewelry and even vinyl records.

And while 40 percent of respondents to the 2017 survey associate a cremation with a memorial service, Americans are increasingly holding those services at religious institutions and nontraditional locations like parks, museums and even at home.

Going green

Another trend is finding greener alternatives to both the traditional burial and cremation.

The 2017 survey found that 54 percent of respondents were interested in green options. Compare this with a 2007 survey of those aged 50 or higher by AARP which found that only 21 percent were interested in a more environmentally friendly burial.

One example of this is a new method of disposing of human remains called alkaline hydrolysis, which involves using water and a salt-based solution to dissolve human remains. Often referred as “water cremation,” it’s preferred by many as a greener alternative to cremation by fire, which consumes fossil fuels. Most funeral homes that offer both methods of cremation charge the same price.

The alkaline hydrolysis process results in a sterile liquid and bone fragments that are reduced to “ash” and returned to the family. Although most Americans are unfamiliar with the process, funeral directors that have adopted it generally report that families prefer it to cremation by fire. California recently became the 15th state to legalize it.

Going home

A rising number of families are also interested in so-called “home funerals,” in which the remains are cleaned and prepared for disposition at home by the family, religious community or friends. Home funerals are followed by cremation, or burial in a family cemetery, a traditional cemetery or a green cemetery.

Assisted by funeral directors or educated by home funeral guides, families that choose home funerals are returning to a set of practices that predate the modern funeral industry.

Proponents say that caring for remains at home is a better way of honoring the relationship between the living and the dead. Home funerals are also seen as more environmentally friendly since remains are temporarily preserved through the use of dry ice rather than formaldehyde-based embalming fluid.

The Green Burial Council says rejecting embalming is one way to go green. Another is to choose to have remains interred or cremated in a fabric shroud or biodegradable casket rather than a casket made from nonsustainable hardwoods or metal. The council promotes standards for green funeral products and certifies green funeral homes and burial grounds. More than 300 providers are currently certified in 41 states and six Canadian provinces.

For example, Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, the historic New York cemetery made famous by Washington Irving, is a certified “hybrid” cemetery because it has reserved a portion of its grounds for green burials: no embalming, no vaults and no caskets unless they are biodegradable — the body often goes straight into the ground with just a simple wrapping.

Clearly Americans are pushing the “traditional” boundaries of how to memorialize their loved ones and dispose of their remains. While I wouldn’t hold out hope that Americans will be able to choose Viking- or Tibetan-style burials anytime soon, you never know.

Welcome to the Departure Lounge.

Destination: death

Ricky Gervais with Penelope Wilton in the Netflix series After Life.

By

Images of sandy beaches, sun-kissed swimming pools and azure blue skies gleam from the window and walls of what appears to be a new travel agent opening in a London shopping centre. But browsers may be surprised by the destination, for it is a journey every one of us will one day take: death.

Look more closely at the posters and it becomes clear that the words are all about “passing away” (half of British adults prefer to avoid the word “death”, apparently). The Departure Lounge, in Lewisham, south London, is the brainchild of the Academy of Medical Sciences, whose mission is to promote biomedical and health research. Death, it turns out, is one of the most under-researched areas in healthcare, accounting for less than half of 1% of money spent.

The idea of the Departure Lounge, explains the academy’s president Professor Sir Robert Lechler, is to enable visitors to ask any questions they might have about the dying process, and also to collect ideas and experiences that could inform future research. “The best time to have conversations about death probably isn’t when you’re confronting it, but well before,” he said. Which is why a shopping centre was deemed an appropriate location – the hope is that the Departure Lounge will attract people who might not be regular visitors to science museums.

Death has been a zeitgeist subject for some years now – witness the Death Café phenomenon, the growth of conferences and books on dying and TV series like the recent Ricky Gervais Netflix comedy After Life. But, says Lechler, the conversation is becoming more urgent. Put simply, there’s more of it about. “Between now and 2040 we’ll see an increase of 25% in the number of deaths per year,” he said. And it’s more than numbers: the run-up to dying is different. “We’re living longer, and the context of death is changing. Longer life means we accumulate more long-term conditions, and people tend to be frail for longer,” he said. “The risk is that people are going to die badly, as opposed to dying well.”

Dr Katherine Sleeman, a palliative care consultant at the Cicely Saunders Institute at King’s College London and a member of the advisory group behind the Departure Lounge, says patients often want to talk about death. “People call it the last taboo, but that’s not my experience. Healthcare professionals can be fearful about raising the subject, but I find patients are often relieved when it’s mentioned. They know they’re dying, and they want to talk about it.”

Also much misunderstood, she says, is that palliative care, far from spelling the end, can mean much better outcomes. “Research shows that when provided early, palliative care is associated with fewer hospital admissions, better pain relief and lower financial costs to the NHS,” she said. “I always say that my aim isn’t to help you live longer, it’s to help you live better.”

On hand will be guides including Yvonne Oakes, a former palliative care nurse who now works as a “soul midwife” or end-of-life doula, supporting patients and their families. In her experience, many people have had negative experiences of death with relatives, and assume that when their time comes isolation, pain and discomfort will be inevitable. That, she says, simply isn’t true. “There is definitely such a thing as a good death. It comes mostly, I believe, from accepting death rather than struggling against it.” And The Departure Lounge, she hopes, will enable people to start to think about acceptance of death, “in a non-threatening, and unforced, way.”

Research into dying, says Sleeman, really matters and can make a real difference. “Many people, and that includes doctors and academics, say: what’s the point of research if it’s not going to prolong life? But that isn’t the point. Quality is crucial: research is quite clear that most people would choose quality of life over length of life.”

The Departure Lounge is supported by the Health Foundation and Wellcome Trust; more information at departure-lounge.org

Top tips for a good death

Remember this is your death: it’s OK to think about what you really want and don’t want, and be clear about it.

Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and to accept help if it’s offered and you want it. You don’t have to struggle on alone.

Make amends for past hurts and disappointments. Some people write letters – you don’t have to post them.

Consider making a death plan, which is the life-end equivalent of a birth plan. Where would you like to die? Who do you want with you – and who do you not want there? Would you like music to be playing? Do you want to avoid attempts to resuscitate you?

Be aware that death involves loss, so there is inevitably going to be emotional pain, both for you and for those you love. But that doesn’t mean you can’t look for the joys in life, even as your health deteriorates. Life can have meaning and enjoyment right up to the end.

Yvonne Oakes

Complete Article HERE!

‘A good death’

Nurse pioneers a better way for elders to die

Nurse practitioner Nikki Johnston has been awarded the inaugural Health Minister’s Award for Nursing Trailblazers.

By Steve Evans

Nikki Johnston is passionate about dying.

She’s just won a big prize as Australia’s most innovative nurse. It was a recognition of the way she is changing the way the elderly end their lives.

Her mission as a nurse in Canberra is to help people have what she calls “a good death”.

She says too many people have “bad deaths” where fear and loneliness dominate their last moments.

Her radical idea is to involve people who are in their last months in the planning for those final fearful moments. The dying attend meetings where their own deaths are discussed.

She says a rigorous study of the results of the new system demonstrates clearly that it is a better way, and she’s pressing politicians to adopt it in the rest of Australia and beyond.

She also thinks there is too much emphasis on research to prolong lives at the expense of spending more to ensure that people die in peace at the right age.

Ms Johnston is a “nurse practitioner” who works in palliative care – it’s the most senior type of nurse, qualified to diagnose illnesses and prescribe drugs and treatments.

She has a missionary zeal for involving the patient in (arguably) the most important process affecting them – their end.

In the residential homes where the system is now used, the dying person attends the meetings and hears how their death will be dealt with. Their views are listened to and acted on.

“If we don’t ask the questions and give people the opportunity to talk about the end of life, we risk isolating people in their last months,” she says.

“They feel like no one gets it – no one understands – what’s going on, and that can be frightening.”

Researchers have studied 1700 people in the ACT at the end of their lives, comparing those where the system is in operation and those where it is not.

The study – the first of its kind in the world – involved rigorous measurement of a raft of variables like how soundly people slept in their last months and how much medication they needed.

The researchers devised a “quality of death” index. Ms Johnston says the results show that the new way works.

She argues that there should be a switch from maintaining uncomfortable and painful lives to the quality of death. “People are living longer but their quality of life is reduced so they are not living well enough or dying well enough,” she says.

“We are not valuing the end of life because we are not putting money into it.”

With the new system, people aren’t told bluntly that they are dying.

Ms Johnston says that she might have a conversation with a resident of an aged care home and ask them how they saw their future. In that conversation, the old person might well say that they thought they were dying.

“I ask them where they are at, what’s important, and most people tell me they are dying,” Ms Johnston says.

“If they are leading this conversation, It’s not confronting. They have taken us there.”

“Gently, we normalise death and dying. We help the staff to be able to talk about it. We support the relatives and loved ones through the process.”

She said that the elderly people she deals with generally don’t fear death. “Most people are ready. They are sick and they’ve had enough. They are ready to go.

“To help someone in their last months of life, we need to know them – to sit with them and talk to them. We need to know what’s important. How do we get this right for the person?”

That is what happened, for example, with Chris Dillon, whose death on March 29, 2017 was peaceful, according to her daughter Rose.

Chris Dillon and family dog, “Dublin”.

The aged mother had been in a residential home in Ainslie for just over two years.

According to her daughter, Mrs Dillon said one day that she felt tired and she was close to the end of her life.

Once that was recognised, the palliative care team became involved.

“She was a pragmatic person,” Rose says.

“She wanted to know what it would feel like, would it hurt, how would people know that she was dying. What would they do with her body?

“And then Nikki came along. She sat down really close to Mum and said: ‘I’m Nikki. I’m from palliative care and we need to talk about some things’.”

According to Rose, her mother simply replied: “What? About me dying?”

“So the conversation started naturally,” she says.

“The impact that Nikki had on Mum’s death was massive. It allowed Mum to have a peaceful death.

“She wasn’t frightened.”

The new system involves staff keeping a kind eye on residents

At the Calvary Haydon Retirement Community in Bruce, for example, manager Kim McGovern says she and her staff quietly look at residents every month to see “who might not be there next month”.

Kim McGovern of Calvary Haydon Retirement Community in Canberra.

Once people are identified, they are talked to sensitively.

An “individual care plan” is drawn up with the involvement of the resident.

“It’s their choice. We involve them early on,” Ms McGovern says. “It’s their last journey.”

The involvement of the dying person allows proper preparation, both medically and emotionally.

This means a final crisis, in which the patient is rushed to hospital to die in a chaotic emergency, is less likely.

Ms Johnston is an extraordinary character – bright and vivacious (at least when she’s expounding on the importance of helping people have “a good death”).

She may have dark moods, in that she says she needs to put her “armour” on before she attends some deathbeds.

And she does cry – after all, she’s got to know the person – but, as she puts it, “this isn’t my grief”.

“The grief belongs to the family,” she says.

Complete Article HERE!

Psychologist Claire White on why we cling to the rituals of death

Even if people have no religious belief in the afterlife, they can’t cognitively imagine themselves as ceasing to exist.

“When you’re gone, you’re gone – just put me in the compost bin.”

California State University psychologist Claire White has heard it before – but doesn’t believe it. On the phone to the Listener, ahead of her trip to New Zealand as one of the guest speakers at the University of Otago’s Science and the Afterlife forum, she says even if people have no religious belief in the afterlife, they can’t cognitively imagine themselves as ceasing to exist.

“It is a universal way of thinking that transcends religious or ethnic belief – that their lives have meaning and purpose that continue after their death. Logically, atheists shouldn’t really care if you dump them in the trash can – but they do. There is a disconnect between the higher-level cognitive belief that there is no god and this kind of cognitive default – that there is something about me that makes me who I am that continues after I die.” This is what is called “psychological essentialism”.

“Even if we believe the soul transcends to heaven, we still go to a grave site because we really believe there is some essence of a person that continues after their death. One of the reasons tree burials and cremations have become popular is because the essence of the person is reflected in that tree or [where the ashes are scattered] along that sea.” Funerary rites acknowledge that legacy and help with the grieving process.

In reviewing funerary practices around the world, White’s team found 97% of the samples studied engage with the bodies of the dead. They touch them, wash them, dress them; they talk, they cry, they say goodbye.

“Which is all psychologically healthy. In the Western world, we are outliers. We are moving from a traditional model to this modern professionalisation of mortuary practices where you pay someone to come and prepare the deceased. There is little contact with the deceased, there is not a lot of emotion – it is done and dusted very quickly. It doesn’t really help the grief experience.”

Nor does it help us prepare our children for death, plan our own funerals or address pressing issues such as diminishing cemetery space.

“People don’t want to think about death – the death of themselves, the death of others. This is one of the main obstacles to top-down change from governments. We don’t plan, we don’t make living wills, children in the US are not educated about death – but how do we explain death to children when we don’t talk about it among ourselves?”

Complete Article HERE!

How to Properly Prepare for End of Life Care

Sometimes death comes like a thief in the night. Other times, there’s a slow and clear buildup. In the latter scenario, one of the benefits – if you can even call it that – is that you have time to prepare for the end of your life.

By

Preparing for Your Final Chapter

At some point, it may become clear that whatever healthcare, treatments, medication, or procedures you’re pursuing to prolong your life are no longer effective. You may also come to realize that they’re doing more harm than good – robbing you of the opportunity to enjoy what time is left. When these revelations become clear, the best thing you can do is stop and focus on your quality of life.

As sobering as it is to accept, you will eventually pass on. And either you pass on without any purpose or plan – leaving the burden to your loved ones – or you can take the time to prepare for the end of your life and, in the process, provide a greater sense of closure for everyone involved.

Everyone’s end of life care situation will be different, but here are some suggestions to help you approach this sensitive and emotional time with poise:

1. Have Important Conversations

The first step is to have the right conversations with the right people. When you decide to stop seeking treatment or pursuing certain healthcare options that are designed to extend your life, it’s important that people know.

Your family needs to know that you’re dying – not so that they can feel sorry for you, but so that they may process it in a healthy manner. These conversations are more for your loved ones than they are for you. Set aside some time to speak with parents, siblings, grandchildren, close friends, mentors, etc. You don’t have to be overly sentimental or wise – just be yourself. Honesty will go a long way.

2. Make Your Wishes Known

Now’s the time to make your wishes known. If you’re currently in a nursing home, hospital, or another care facility, it may be wise to move back home. This will lessen your chances of receiving poor care from a staff that may neglect certain important needs. Instead, you can receive personalized care from your loved ones (who are more likely to respect your wishes).

If you haven’t already done so, now’s also a good time to designate a trusted loved one to make medical decisions on your behalf.

“This person, called your healthcare proxy or medical power-of-attorney, is the person who you know will make decisions the way you want them made and who can most easily stand at your bedside, if necessary,” patient advocate Trisha Torrey writes. “Your proxy will need to make decisions for you if you are in a coma, have a sudden heart attack or stroke, experience another debilitating event, and can’t speak. In addition to your primary representative, you’ll want to designate who your second choice representative should be.”

If there are specific details that are important to you, make these clear as well. For example, some people only want certain individuals present when the time comes for them to die. Other people don’t care. Speak your mind now so that you have the chance to die on your terms.

3. Get Financial Matters in Order

Hopefully you already have a last will and testament drafted. If you don’t, go ahead and do so. This will allow you to direct your finances and assets to the right people. It also saves your heirs from having to deal with the legal fallout of an estate that hasn’t been properly accounted for.

4. Secure the Right Burial Arrangements

Finally, be sure that you establish and document your burial arrangements prior to your passing. This is one less thing your family has to worry about. It gives them the opportunity to grieve properly, rather than hurrying around to figure out administrative details.

Leaving With Grace and Dignity

You will leave a legacy when you die. Whether this legacy is positive or negative remains to be seen. By preparing for the end of your life with purpose and dignity, you’ll increase the chances of passing on a legacy that people are happy to attach themselves to. Take some time to think about your wishes and how they can be executed tastefully.

Complete Article HERE!

A Good Life And A Good Death…

What Is Palliative Care?


Palliative care is a growing specialty that provides comfort care and that teaches patients and doctors how to talk about patients’ goals for life with serious disease and how to prepare for a good ending.

By

“He will not die on your watch.”

That’s what the family of a patient told Sunita Puri when she was a resident in internal medicine. They were chilling words for the young doctor as she took over the care of a very sick man on the overnight shift.

To Puri, the patient, who had widespread metastatic liver cancer, appeared to be dying. She tried to talk with the family about forgoing heroic measures, to let him have peace in his last hours. But they were adamant.

“Do everything,” they told her. Hours after admitting him to the intensive care unit, she was overseeing chest compressions to revive him after his heart stopped. “I was blinking back tears,” she recalls. The man died that night.

Few people would say they want to die while undergoing painful last-minute resuscitation or while hooked up to machines in a hospital. Yet it’s the death many Americans end up with. Now a palliative care doctor at the University of Southern California, Puri is fighting for an alternative.

In her new book, That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour, Puri writes about how palliative care specialists are working to change medicine from within — teaching other doctors how to talk to patients about their hopes and fears, not just their disease and treatment. Palliative care, she says, gives doctors, patients and their families a new vocabulary with which to talk about the way life’s goals can shift when you have a serious illness and how to plan for a good final chapter.

We spoke with Puri about the field of palliative care and what patients need to know.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What is palliative care, and how is it different from hospice?

Palliative care is attending to the physical, emotional and spiritual suffering of patients and families who are dealing with a serious illness. Hospice is a type of palliative care that we provide in the last six months of life. And I would say hospice is even distinct from end-of-life care, which is really the care of patients in the last days and hours of their lives.

In our country, hospice is overwhelmingly provided in a patient’s home or in a nursing home, whereas palliative care is available at any stage of an illness. And so we can see people in the hospital; we can see people in clinics when they come to see their oncologist or their cardiologist. With palliative care, you can have us on your team just right alongside care like chemotherapy or dialysis — we’re meant to attend to your quality of life. And in an ideal circumstance, we will be there when you decide to transition to hospice.

How common is it now to have palliative care specialists available?

There’s actually very few of us, and many of us are concentrated in the big cities. So in rural areas or in nonacademic teaching hospitals, there’s definitely a shortage of palliative care docs around the country. Our presence and the need for us is growing though. So for example, the American Society of Clinical Oncology now has a recommendation that at the time of diagnosis of a serious illness, palliative care should be involved. Patients with a serious illness can ask for a consultation with the palliative care team if their other care providers don’t bring it up, either in a hospital or a clinic setting.

We have studies that show that for patients with, for example, metastatic lung cancer, if they got palliative care right alongside their cancer treatment — as opposed to just getting cancer treatment alone — the patients actually lived longer and had better quality-of-life scores.

What other advantages does palliative care offer?

I think the emotional and spiritual aspects of it are actually some of the most important supports that we can offer our patients.

One thing my patients tell me a lot is, “Thank you for listening.” And I think there is something about our field — focused on being silent and listening to people — that is deeply therapeutic for the vast majority of my patients. To say, “I’m going to be with you through this whole journey, no matter what the outcome with your treatment, and work with your other doctors to make sure we’re all on the same page about what therapies may or may not actually be helpful to you in the way that you define helpful.” I think there’s something pretty magical about that.

You wrote that when you found palliative care, you were finally able to become the kind of doctor you wanted to be. What did you mean by that?

I grew up the daughter of an anesthesiologist — she was always my first model for what a doctor should be. My mother is very technically skilled, but she is also deeply devoted to the idea that every human being is kind of an embodiment of the divine who she felt she was in service to. So, she really had this beautiful intertwining in her practice of being very scientific but also being very spiritual — being able to take people to the operating room and control their physiology to get them through an operation but also understanding that the body and nature has its limits.

And that’s what I wanted to be: somebody with the technical and scientific command of medicine but who understood that every human life is different from the other. In my medical training, there were so much focus on the technical and scientific aspects. But as I was learning those things, I was not also learning how to talk with someone who has a serious diagnosis. How do you explain to them how their life might change? How do you ask, if this is not something that we can cure, “What would be really important to you in the time that you have?” And this language was not given to me in medical training.

When people get a diagnosis like cancer, they sometimes talk about “being a fighter” or “fighting the disease.” Why do you find that kind of language problematic?

When we think of disease as a battle to fight, you kind of divide people into winners and losers — which is not a mentality I think benefits them.

What’s dangerous is that when we’re talking about a fight, if someone chooses not to “continue to fight,” then people will often tell me, “I feel like I’m giving up.” I have to reframe that for them to say, “You may be a fighter, but your body cannot fight this anymore. Can you hear that distinction between you and the natural limits of your body?” I have found that to be incredibly potent because people can see that this isn’t a personal thing.

You know, you did not deserve to get this horrible bout of heart failure, and your not “beating it” is not your fault.

What are the consequences for doctors and for the patient’s treatment of using this kind of language?

I think people feel an obligation, if they identify as a fighter, to keep trying any and every treatment offered to them — sometimes without a full appreciation of the risks of those treatments or whether those treatments might keep them in a place they don’t want to be, like an intensive care unit, instead of having the opportunity to go home. I think that sort of “fight or give up” mentality is such a toxic binary. And I’ve seen people suffer tremendously because they felt that if they said no to therapy, that they would be letting other people around them down.

From my perspective, when I was in my residency, when I heard those words, I then felt obligated to offer anything and everything to the patient or family — even when I knew that certain treatments were not going to help them but could very well hurt them. So I think hearing those words almost put a stop to any real in-depth conversation about what someone is hoping for and what realistically we as physicians can offer them to fulfill those hopes.

I still regret the ways that I offered therapies to patients that I knew would not be in their best interest. But I didn’t know how to talk about another way when I was in my training.

What kind of therapies might be harmful or not be in their best interest?

Being in a clinical trial is one example of a therapy people often feel they need to take but may not truly be in their best interests if it, for example, requires them to uproot their life and go elsewhere. Or if it has side effects that we may not really know about, because part of the trial is to figure out what the toxicities are.

And the other scenario I’ve seen is people in the ICU with an overwhelming infection or a set of post-surgical complications, and they’re suffering one complication after another, especially if they’re elderly. And we can keep trying to manipulate their physiology, using very powerful medications and machines, but we’re not always as attentive to what someone’s life would actually look like if we were successful in reversing some of the problems that they’re going through.

So when a palliative care team is involved and you have these kinds of difficult discussions early on in a serious diagnosis, what can a good outcome look like for the patient?

The advantage of getting to know people and their family early on when they first get a diagnosis is that we can really help them through their treatment. To think about and articulate what’s most important for them if a specific treatment doesn’t work or if it takes a huge toll on their quality of life. And when we can have those discussions, then a happy ending might be that they have their pain, their shortness of breath, their nausea, all of those things exquisitely well controlled. And they decide on their own terms when to transition, for example, to hospice.

When I was a hospice doctor, I think the best situations were when people were still able to be themselves and participate as much in living as they could — even though their bodies were failing. They could still be cognitively intact. Their symptoms were well controlled. They were in a place they wanted to be in. They were living their lives on their own terms for however long they had. And that to me is what a good ending can look like.

Even other doctors don’t always understand what palliative care is or embrace it. What do you think the obstacle is?

I think doing what we do in our field is a little bit of the rejection of our culture’s idea of what medicine exists to do. I think the public thinks of doctors as heroes that can beat diseases and extend lives. And in many important ways we are heroes. Surgery is safer. Childbirth is safer. We’ve eliminated certain infectious diseases almost entirely because of vaccines. But I think we are not good at knowing what to do when we can’t fix a problem.

For patients who have a terminal diagnosis, what advice would you give about how to decide whether or not to opt for some of the more extreme life-sustaining measures, like going on a ventilator or a feeding tube?

In planning ahead, I always encourage people to think about the quality of life that they value. What are the things that they would be OK not doing? And what are the things that if they couldn’t do them would make their life extremely difficult — maybe even not worth living? And if people can think about their values and their goals in broad strokes, the broad strokes can help inform the more specific question about CPR or a ventilator.

I encourage families to really look to their doctors to guide them. And to say, if there’s a question about going on a ventilator, “Is this for a reversible condition, as far as you can tell, doctor? Or am I taking a gamble, a big enough gamble that he may be stuck on the ventilator forever, and then I would have to make the decision to stop? Tell me more about that.” I think being able to ask your doctor openly and not feel alone in making some of these weighty decisions is extremely important. So there are those two components of it: thinking yourself, “What is the sort of life I value? What would be a life that would be too hard for me to live even with the help of medicine?” And to talk to your doctor, even if you’re healthy right now, because you want to prepare for the storm.

Complete Article HERE!