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Understanding Palliative Care

— And when it may help

By Dr. Rachel L. Ombres AHN

Caring for people with serious illnesses or chronic conditions is one of health care’s most complicated — and important — challenges.

While medicine continues to improve the way we treat diseases such as cancer or heart failure, it doesn’t always do a great job of caring for the things that matter most to patients and their families, such as physical and emotional distress.

And despite their frequent visits to doctors and hospitals, people living with serious medical conditions may still have unaddressed symptoms like pain or fatigue, and often report poor communication about those symptoms with their health care providers.

In other words, medicine is pretty great at treating the disease — but not as good at caring for the whole person.

That’s where palliative care specialists enter the picture, helping people live and feel better throughout the course of a serious illness.

Palliative care is a growing field of medicine that focuses on helping patients and their families cope with the physical and emotional stressors of advancing health problems. There is strong evidence that palliative care not only can improve quality of life for seriously ill patients, but also may reduce avoidable hospital admissions and enable patients to spend more time at home doing what matters most to them.

What is palliative care?

Palliative care focuses on providing people with relief from the symptoms and stressors of serious illnesses, such as cancer, chronic heart or lung disease, dementia, neurologic diseases like Parkinson’s, chronic liver disease, kidney failure, and many others.

Delivered by a specialty-trained team of doctors, nurses, social workers and other clinicians, palliative care provides expertise in symptom management, care coordination and communication, with the goal of improving quality of life for both the patient and their loved ones. Palliative care is appropriate for people at any age, and any stage of a serious illness.

Importantly, palliative care is not the same thing as hospice.

While palliative care is led by clinicians specifically trained in that field, it’s provided in collaboration with other health care providers, including primary care doctors and specialists — and, unlike hospice care, it can be administered at the same time that the patient is receiving curative treatment, and at any stage of serious illness from the time of initial diagnosis.

A person with cancer undergoing chemotherapy, for example, might benefit from palliative care, as would a person with lung disease seeking a lung transplant. In fact, when people facing a serious illness receive palliative care early in their disease and alongside treatment for their underlying condition, evidence demonstrates that it may even prolong survival.

Unfortunately, the historical misunderstanding about palliative care’s association with hospice — and the general lack of awareness about palliative medicine as a specialty, even among providers — means that millions of people who could benefit from palliative care don’t get it.

Worldwide, only about 14% of people who need palliative care currently receive it, according to the World Health Organization.

Where can I receive palliative care?

Palliative care is provided in all settings. To best meet the needs of their patients, palliative care teams see people in the hospital, outpatient clinics, nursing facilities — and even in the comfort of their own homes.

Providing home and community-based palliative care is not only convenient for patients and their families, but it also aims to reduce certain complications of advanced illness that would otherwise require emergency room visits and hospitalizations.

The benefits — patients who feel better, have fewer unnecessary hospitalizations and have more support during stressful times — are attractive to patients, families and insurers alike. As a result, insurance providers such as Medicare are changing the way they reimburse for home-based palliative services, while health systems and other agencies are actively expanding access to palliative care across Pennsylvania and nationwide.

Today, there are more options than ever for home- and community-based palliative care.

How palliative care can help: One patient’s story

Barbara had just retired from a career in management at a local grocery store. She looked forward to the added time retirement would give her to do what mattered most, like spend time with her family and tend to her garden.

Unfortunately, a new cancer diagnosis thwarted these plans, and she was soon spending more time in the chemotherapy suite than with her grandchildren or her prized perennials. Barbara’s pain and fatigue prevented her from being active outside and limited her appetite.

When her primary care provider referred her to palliative care, Barbara was unsure what to expect.

The palliative physician suggested several interventions to help Barbara feel and function better, including medication changes and gentle exercise techniques, and provided additional resources for her family. The palliative care team also helped Barbara understand her care options and encouraged her to speak up about her preferences to her other health care providers and to her loved ones, so that everyone was on the same page about supporting her goals.

In time, these interventions helped lessen Barbara’s symptoms and streamline her care. Throughout her cancer journey, the palliative care team has remained a constant layer of support for Barbara and her family. With close attention to her goals and symptoms, the palliative care team helps Barbara live as well as possible, despite having a serious illness.

If you or a loved one has a serious medical condition, ask your doctor or insurance provider about a referral to palliative care.

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New online tool helps people with dementia document future care decisions

By Eric Galatas

The number of U.S. residents aged 65 or older living with Alzheimer’s disease, the most common form of dementia, is expected to double from nearly 7 million to 14 million by 2050, according to a new report.

Dementia is a progressive disease which gets worse over time, eventually making it impossible to communicate or make decisions.

Jessica Empeño, national director of clinical engagement and education for Compassion & Choices, explained a new online tool can help people plan ahead so their wishes can be honored.

“The people around them — whether it be their family, their loved ones, their health care team — know what is important to that person and what types of care they hope for in the future,” Empeño emphasized.

Compassion & Choices’ free Dementia Values and Priorities tool is designed to help people communicate and document their future health care wishes before developing or in early-stage dementia. A series of questions and educational videos guides users through a range of changes commonly seen in the disease’s progression.

Kim Martin, a resident of the southwest Colorado town of Hesperus, used the tool after receiving her Alzheimer’s diagnosis. She had become increasingly anxious about what the future would bring and said the tool helped her specify her intentions so her husband and children would have no doubts about how to support her.

“Being able to get it all on paper and tell it to my family really improved my outlook and really improved my ability to move past that stage,” Martin noted.

Empeño stressed the value of documenting end-of-life health care decisions cannot be overstated, especially for women, who represent nearly two-thirds of Americans 65 or older living with Alzheimer’s. She encouraged people to use the tool, share the documents with the people you love and trust, and help them understand what is most important to you.

“While completing the legal documents is really important, the most important point is having the conversation,” Empeño pointed out. “The best way for you to get the kind of care that you want, especially at the end of life, is to have those really important conversations.”

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Patients limited from accessing Voluntary Assisted Dying at some hospitals and palliative care units

Miki says she and her mother felt they had to choose between getting the best possible care or the best possible death.

By Annika Blau

It’s July 2021, and Miki is begging for help.

Her mum is trying to ask her doctor something, but in recent weeks, she’s lost the ability to speak.

Miki’s mum has motor neurone disease (MND) and her only means of communicating is with a letter board, where she blinks to spell out what she’s trying to say.

She needs staff from her hospital to operate the equipment, but they’re refusing to be involved.

“It really sent a … message that what we were doing was wrong,” Miki says.

Eventually, Miki’s begging reaches the hospital CEO, who grants special permission for an occupational therapist to set up the letter board.

“There were rules that [the occupational therapist] could set my mum up with the equipment, but they were not to be present in the room for any conversations,” Miki says.

And then, letter by letter, Miki’s mum blinks to spell out her request: She wants to die.

Voluntary assisted dying (VAD) has been legal in Victoria since 2019, meaning people like Miki’s mum who are suffering from a degenerative condition can choose to take certain medication to end their life.

But healthcare providers can refuse to facilitate VAD if they object to it on ethical grounds.

This is the situation Miki and her mother found themselves in.

“I was really shocked to learn that a publicly funded hospital could have policies that existed on ideological or religious grounds,” Miki says.

“Someone like my mum, who can’t talk, can’t move, can’t advocate for themselves… is facing just about as many barriers as a person can face. So every little hurdle that’s added to that is just an enormous stress to overcome.”

‘Forbidden to raise the topic’

At her home in the west of Melbourne, Miki stops in the hallway and gazes into a bedroom.

It’s stacked floor to ceiling with boxes — her mum’s entire life — but Miki can’t bear to face it just yet.

Her mum was a dance teacher and later a librarian, but when she started having falls in 2019, she was diagnosed with MND.

A photograph of a woman with dark hair sits beside an open jewellery box containing a pearl necklace.
Miki’s mother was a dance teacher and later worked as a librarian. 

Miki’s mum was living in South Australia at the time, but they were told one of the best places to get care for MND was in Melbourne, at Calvary Bethlehem Hospital.

“We also knew she’d be able to access VAD in Victoria, which she couldn’t in South Australia, so we moved her over,” Miki says.

What they didn’t realise was that Calvary Bethlehem is one of 21 public Catholic hospitals around Australia with a blanket policy against VAD.

Miki noticed right from the first appointment “an undercurrent of nervousness in everyone we spoke to at Calvary Bethlehem — if you mentioned VAD, it was like hitting a brick wall.”

But they didn’t know where else to turn. To Miki, switching hospitals felt like choosing between the best possible care, and the best possible death.

“As we understood it, Calvary Bethlehem was the place that people with MND go. It was never discussed with us that there was an alternative that might be better able to support my mum’s desire to apply for VAD,” Miki says.

A woman gazes into a room stacked high with moving boxes.
Miki had her mum’s possessions remotely packed and moved from South Australia during the pandemic. By the time her mother was ready to apply for VAD, they were both exhausted.

One doctor, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Background Briefing that referring doctors can’t warn their patients about Calvary Bethlehem’s stance, because raising VAD with a patient is illegal.

Doctors can only answer questions about VAD if the patient raises it first, and many have not yet considered it when they’re first diagnosed and choosing a hospital.

“Patients who are inadvertently admitted to Catholic hospitals may never learn of their rights and as doctors we are not allowed to educate them — the questions must come from them,” the doctor said.

“I am forbidden by law to raise the topic. Therein lies a massive problem.”

The doctor said they’d had to remove patients from Calvary Bethlehem’s “superb service” due to its refusal to be involved in VAD.

In a statement, Calvary Bethlehem confirmed the team caring for Miki’s mother were following its policy of not being involved with VAD.

It said it responds “openly, sensitively and respectfully to anyone expressing a wish to explore VAD” and “would not block a person’s access”.

Miki's mum's necklace
Miki says her mum’s decline was “swift and devastating”. “On the one side of [Melbourne’s] lockdown she could hug me and on the other she couldn’t.”

Personal views influencing policy

Objection to VAD is also prevalent in the palliative care sector, where Catholic-run organisations are major players.

But objection is not limited to faith-based organisations — many secular public facilities also refuse to be involved.

QUT Professor of end of life law and regulation, Ben White, says the policy for entire institutions is often influenced by the views of individuals in leadership positions.

Professor White interviewed dozens of families in Victoria about accessing VAD.

He says the majority described objection by healthcare facilities, with their loved ones blocked from having VAD doctors or pharmacists visit, or prohibited from taking the medication on site.

Objection was particularly problematic for regional families he interviewed, who “didn’t have the ability to just go to the next institution down the road,” he says.

A man wearing a suit and tie and glasses stands smiling in front of a shelf full of books.
QUT Professor of end of life law and regulation Ben White.

‘He scolded me’

Like Miki, Julius Pieker had to watch his mother decline during the pandemic.

She had ovarian cancer, and after a bad fall, was sent to Wantirna Palliative Care Unit — a secular public facility servicing Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

During her stay, she summoned Julius to her bedside and told him she wanted to use VAD. Under the legislation, this is available to anyone expected to die within six months.

“I said to her, look, we’ll support you in whatever you want to do,” he says.

Julius looked around the facility for someone to tell, and spied his mother’s doctor.

But the doctor’s reaction floored Julius.

“He scolded me. And tried to say that I was not to encourage my mum to do this,” Julius says.

“I was distressed by him making that sort of accusation that I would do that, and I told him so.”

Julius says the doctor was silent.

“He didn’t try to console me or say, you know, ‘I didn’t mean to give you the wrong impression’. He was just like stone,” he says.

Legally, there’s no obligation for objecting doctors to refer people like Julius on to a service that might be able to provide more information.

“I was left feeling that I had nowhere to go after I spoke to that one person,” Julius says.

What Julius didn’t realise was that until recently, Wantirna had been transferring patients who requested VAD out of this public facility.

“I didn’t know about the politics of palliative care,” Julius says.

“They have no right to stop people from accessing [VAD], because it’s legal.”

Julius’s mum was transferred back to the public hospital she’d initially come from, where she was able to access the VAD medication to end her life.

Melbourne oncologist, Prasad Cooray, says the transferring of patients out of Wantirna has been an “ongoing problem” for him and his colleagues.

In some instances, patients have been transferred upon requesting a VAD permit — before they even decide whether to go ahead with using the medication.

“[Transferring patients] takes away dignity and adds unnecessary distress to these last moments of their lives,” Dr Cooray says.

A man wearing a light grey jacket sits side on on a stool smiling at the camera with a dark grey backdrop behind
Melbourne oncologist Prasad Cooray says the transferring of patients has been an ‘ongoing problem’.

His biggest fear has been that one of his patients could die in the back of an ambulance during a transfer — “a dying patient is dying, unstable,” he says.

Patients can also be distraught on having to move facilities, and feel chastised, he says.

“It’s a judgement that’s passed upon you. How terrible is that — that we are passing a judgement on the dying patient in a place where we need to be infusing humanity and love?”

The other public palliative care centre in Dr Cooray’s catchment is Caritas Christi, a Catholic organisation with limitations around VAD.

The main option left for patients wanting VAD has been the acute medical wards of local hospitals, which Dr Cooray says are “one step down from an emergency department” and “not designed for dying”.

“Palliative care places are … a much more peaceful environment, as homely as you can make it,” Dr Cooray says.

“These institutions exist for the benefit and for serving the patients.

“And I do not understand how it’s been flipped around that it exists to serve the conscientious objections of staff. Those people should … step aside and allow people who do not have objections to carry it out in that place.”

In other instances, patients had been transferred home, where families often felt ill-equipped to provide 24/7 care for their dying loved one.

Dr Cooray said the local health authority, Eastern Health, had been long aware of the situation at its Wantirna Palliative Care Unit.

But last year, Victoria’s VAD Board got involved after a complaint from a patient’s family.

Eastern Health then changed its guidelines to mandate that VAD be accessible at all its sites, and in recent months, Wantirna stopped transferring patients seeking VAD.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Nobody Likes Dealing with Death

— Until They Attend One of Amy Pickard’s Humorous ‘Good To Go!’ Parties

By Cheryl Maguire

When Amy Pickard’s mother died suddenly in 2012, she was understandably grief-stricken. But she also felt frustrated and overwhelmed, since her mother didn’t plan ahead for her death.

“I would have given anything to talk to my mom just one more time, but it wasn’t to hear her tell me she loved me; I needed her to tell me the friggin’ Wi-Fi password!” Pickard says.

Since her mother lived far away, Pickard didn’t know what bills needed to be paid or what to do with her mother’s now-deceased body.

“I just said, can you put her [body] on ice? Because I have no idea what is going on,” Pickard recalls. In an effort to normalize death and create a death-positive movement, Pickard teaches people how to throw a death party and add some humor to the inevitable and often daunting end-of-life duties.

Dealing with uncomfortable death duties

Pickard refers to all of the different decisions that need to be made and tasks that need to be completed after someone dies as “death duties.” She says these duties are “the hellscape of details forced upon a grieving loved one after their person dies.” This includes responsibilities such as cleaning their house and sorting their belongings, making funeral arrangements, settling their finances and closing their estate.

After her horrible experience with her mother’s death duties, Pickard wanted to help others avoid the same issues. “I was preaching the gospel of advanced planning to my friends,” she says. Surprised at how her friends took to the lessons, Pickard thought, “I have a message here. And it’s landing.”

In 2014, she created a long list of questions related to when someone dies. The list was a booklet called Departure File, which she still sells today. She included, “all the minute, everyday things that came up that I had no answer to, like ‘Do you have a storage space?’”

“Good To Go!” death parties are changing the narrative

Pickard realized most people think of death and dying as morbid and creepy, so they don’t like to talk about it. She also knew most people would probably not want to answer the questions in the Departure File, so she decided to create a party where everyone filled out the answers.

“I thought, ‘I’m a good communicator, I’m an extrovert and I have a sense of humor, so why not have a party?’” she says.

During the parties, Pickard tapped into her sense of humor by creating death-themed soundtracks with songs like “Another One Bites the Dust” and “Stairway to Heaven.” She also had everyone bring a potluck dish based on the recipe of a loved one.

She didn’t have a business plan when she started; instead, she learned as she went along and as her business evolved. Her parties are now referred to as “Good To Go!” parties, though guests have also described them as “Death Tupperware Parties” or “Fete du Mort” shindigs.

People who attended the initial parties “were blown away by it—all of us felt a beautiful kind of electricity in the room,” Pickard recalls, noting that no one else was hosting these types of events. “It is unbelievable how important this is, and how in denial our entire society is over the one absolute positive thing that we know with 100% certainty is going to happen,” she says.

Normalizing the death-positive movement

In a bid to overturn this cultural thinking, Pickard considers herself to be part of the death-positive movement—a way of thinking that encourages people to have end-of-life celebrations and speak openly about death, dying and corpses.

The modern-day concept of the death-positive movement dates back to the 1970s, but the death-positive movement was further popularized in 2011 by Caitlin Doughty, a mortician who believes people should change their perceptions about death. On her website, The Order of the Good Death, Doughty says death should be a part of your life. “Accepting that death itself is natural, but the death anxiety and terror of modern culture are not,” Doughty states on her website.

When Pickard’s father died, the experience was opposite that of her mother’s death. Pickard attributes that to the fact that he filled out the Departure File and talked openly with her about advanced planning. When she first created the Departure File, she wanted to help others and didn’t consider how it could one day help her. Like her mother, her father died suddenly. When he was intubated in the hospital, she gave a copy of his Departure File that included his advanced care directive to the staff. Their response was, “No one ever does this. This is amazing.”

Before Pickard’s father passed away, she said to him, “You know that everything is taken care of.” She says the look of peace on his face in response brought her comfort. It was at that moment she understood that advanced planning also brings peace to a person before they die.

“It was such a weird, ironic moment that the company that I created for others actually helped me and helped my grief,” she says. “With [my dad’s] instruction, I felt empowered. I felt I was honoring him.” The directions he provided also eliminated any uncertainty she may have faced making decisions about duties related to his death.

Planning for death is planning your life

Even though “Good To Go!” parties are humorous and lighthearted, there are still times, understandably, when people are grieving. Pickard handles these situations by offering a tissue and trying to help them understand that, “when you plan for your death, it’s actually planning your life.”

She explains that people prepare for natural disasters by stocking up on candles and getting a generator, but they don’t plan for their death. “We spend more time building a burrito than we do thinking about what we want to happen when we die,” she says. Advanced planning is a way of letting people know how you want to be remembered, she adds.

Pickard recently expanded her business to help people declutter their homes while simultaneously creating advanced planning regarding their material things. She refers to this task as legacy organizing.

“I am helping people organize their homes for their death,” she says. She explains that her services are similar to that of a “death concierge.” She says, “I encourage people to clean out their places with their families. And that way, you make new memories. It’s actually fun.”

This lighthearted approach to death and advanced planning underscores Pickard’s mission with “Good To Go!” parties. “I’m not a doctor; I’m not a lawyer. I am just literally a girl that’s lived through grief and wants to help other people get through it too.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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After Unthinkable Loss, Biking Helped Me Embrace Life Again

— A grieving mother finds a new beginning on two wheels.

By Jess Mayhugh

My first bike was lavender and had Big Bird on it, a sight to behold under the Christmas tree. I rode that thing until the training wheels practically fell off — gliding around our back alley, cutting through baseball fields and, much to my mom’s horror, thudding down our basement stairs one afternoon.

Luckily, that incident didn’t scare me off bikes, and I continued to ride into my teenage years. But a driver’s license meant I abandoned my bike. The wheels stopped rotating, the bell stopped ringing and my helmet stayed clipped in a dim corner of our basement.

My mom died following a grueling battle with multiple sclerosis when I was barely 18. For years afterward, I distracted myself with college-aged escapism: moving away, making new friends, sneaking into bars, taking road trips and ultimately earning a degree.

I would head home for breaks and holidays, driving around in my mom’s old Hyundai Excel hatchback. Every winding turn reminded me that, while I was moving through life and becoming an adult, part of me was still stuck in place. Only during these drives would I allow myself to feel the weight of losing her. I thought grieving was something you did alone.

***

I returned to biking when a lot of people did, at the beginning of the pandemic. I bought a beach cruiser on Craigslist and spent my evenings whizzing along the Baltimore waterfront amid a sea of dog walkers and other pedestrians trying to figure out what was going on in the world.

My husband and I moved to a much hillier part of town at the end of 2020. I took advantage of flat trails where I could, but spent many evenings walking my bike up inclines, pathetically, as joggers passed me by. When I got pregnant, I continued cycling, but my growing belly got in the way of my legs and, by the time I hit my third trimester, my form was totally off.

I left my bike in the basement once again to collect dust. But life led me back to it when our newborn daughter, Lucy, died from a birth-related brain injury in the fall of 2022.

My grief looked a lot different than it had two decades prior. I was a mother who had lost a daughter, not the other way around. Instead of veering away from the deep, dark feelings, I was mature enough to realize I had to lean into them.

There was no escaping it — it was on my body, in my husband’s eyes. We both tried every form of therapy we could: individual, couple, physical. I also did the confrontational work that I knew was necessary (seeking out other stories of infant loss, sharing my own). In part, I was caring for that lonely, lost teenager inside of me.

The biggest difference, though, was accepting help from friends and family. Loved ones cleared our house of all the “baby things” while we were still at the hospital and dropped endless amounts of food on our porch. This time, I let myself be cared for; I allowed support to seep into every crevice of my life.

***

A friend invited us on her family’s trip to the Outer Banks, six weeks after I gave birth. I missed being active and was grasping at anything that would bring me happiness. So we dedicated one day of our trip to renting bikes.

I worried about my pelvic floor, so I only intended to ride a couple of miles. But, before long, I had biked 10 through the salty North Carolina air, over boardwalk planks with views of egrets flying up from the dunes. I had missed this feeling of being at once untethered yet in control, and I wanted to take the flat terrain back home with me.

Several months later, after my husband and I had returned to work and attempted to find semblances of normalcy, we took another trip to visit family in northern Maine. A common trope with grieving, people say, is that you no longer “sweat the small stuff.” But, on this trip, I realized the small stuff could actually save me.

My scientist uncle had MacGyvered an electric bike together for my aunt to ride around their remote lake town. I borrowed it one morning and, with occasional help from the motor, I started seeing those rocky hurdles in my rearview mirror. For hours, I coasted up and down hills, through tall Eastern pine trees. I braked for critters, took in lake views and reminded myself — as I’ve often had to do — that there are still ways to experience joy in the wake of unspeakable pain.

I wanted that joy to continue. So, when I returned home, I purchased an e-bike online and took it to the local shop to get it tuned up. I test-rode it in my back alley, just as I had done as a young girl. Then I was off, fearlessly making my way to that too-steep park, knowing I had a safety net when I needed it. With every pedal stroke, I could feel my jaw loosening, heaviness lifting from my shoulders, my heart opening to optimism again. I was finding a way up, and through.

I spent practically every day last fall, a year since our daughter’s death, ably sailing up hills, with twigs and leaves crunching beneath my tires. Most mornings, I listened to playlists or podcasts. But, at the beginning of one ride, my headphones died and I was forced to take in my surroundings, to be fully present. Everywhere I looked, there was such life on display: marching bands practicing routines, disc golfers hurling Frisbees, women taking garden tours at the arboretum, families of deer peeking through the trees.

For the first time since Lucy died, I felt lucky — that I lived so close to these tree-lined trails, that I was able to witness the softer sides of nature, that I could pedal at all.

Now with spring in like a lion, I’m back out riding. When hills come up on the horizon, I don’t let pride stand in the way. I crank up the electric-powered motor a couple of notches and allow it to give me a boost. Slowly, through every swerve and switchback, grief has given way to gratitude. But only because I have help moving through it.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Death Cafes

— Where people talk mortality over tea and cake

Death Cafes can be held anywhere but one of the golden rules is there will be ‘refreshing drinks and nourishing food – and cake!’

The meet-ups are intended to offer a judgement-free and respectful space to discuss the end of life

By Chas Newkey-Burden

Once a month, in countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, people are gathering to eat cake and talk about the typically taboo topic of death.

At Death Cafes, said Emma Freud in The Times, people with a range of interests in the subject come together to discuss “the end of life experience in any of its forms”, in what is widely viewed as part of the “death positive” movement.

The background

Death Cafes were founded by Jon Underwood and his mother, Sue Barsky Reid, a psychotherapist. They were inspired by the work of Swiss sociologist Bernard Crettaz, who had developed a project called Café Mortel, where people would gather to talk about death.

The first Death Cafe in the UK was held at Underwood’s home in Hackney, east London, in September 2011. It was a “wonderful occasion”, said the Death Cafe website, and more were then held in places including “funky cafes, people’s houses, cemeteries, a yurt and the Royal Festival Hall”.

The four rules are that Death Cafes are offered on a not-for-profit basis; in an accessible, respectful and confidential space; with no intention of leading people to any conclusion, product or course of action; and that cake is offered. The gatherings are a “discussion group rather than a grief support or counselling session”, said the website.

Death Cafes spread nationally and internationally, with the first overseas version held in Columbus, Ohio, in 2012. There have now been more than 18,000 groups worldwide, but “they seem to be most prevalent in countries where people are uptight about the subject” and “hence we have more than 3,400 in the UK”, said Freud.

Underwood died suddenly in June 2017, at the age of 44, and Death Cafe is now run by his mother and his sister, Jools Barsky.

The latest

Visiting a Death Cafe in London, Freud found “there were no formal objectives” or “grief counselling”, but there was “tea and, naturally, cake – that great lubricant of awkwardness”. The discussion was “riveting” and free of “small talk”. A woman with terminal cancer spoke and “because we were strangers, her words had no consequences she would need to deal with, and that seemed to set her free”.

After joining a Death Cafe in Willesden, northwest London, Gaby Wine wrote in The Jewish Chronicle that it was “heart-warming” that “while not everyone agrees with one another, everyone shows great respect”. Despite the subject matter, she had a “surprisingly jolly chat”.

Attendees will “seamlessly switch” between “sombrely discussing subjects like the difference between suicide and medical aid-in-dying” to “joking about the sayings they’d want written on their tombstones”, said The Huntington News.

The reaction

A newcomer to her area, Freud “learnt more about the soul of my neighbourhood in those two hours than I had in the previous two months”. There was “joy” in the “deep connection with a hall full of strangers”, the “licence to show vulnerability without judgment” and “the privilege of being granted access to the most tender and unprotected place in the hearts of my neighbours”.

During the Victorian era people hired professional mourners to “weep” at burial sites and funerals and help attendees “feel safe enough to do the same”, said Anna Wolfe on Huck. And “in a way” Death Cafes provide “something similar”.

Meanwhile, if you want to find or even host one, check the organisation’s website. It’s easy to set one up, wrote Wolfe. “All you need is a set of Death Cafe guidelines, a venue and the ability to bake or buy a pack of Mr Kipling’s.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Cancer patients often want ‘one more round.’

— Should doctors say no?

Studies show that when cancer returns, patients are often quite willing to receive toxic treatments that offer minimal potential benefit.

By by Mikkael A. Sekeres, MD

My patient was in his early 30s and his leukemia had returned again following yet another round of treatment.

He was a poster child for the recently reported rise in cancer rates in the young, and had just asked me what chemotherapy cocktail I could devise for him next, to try to rid him of his cancer.

I hesitated before answering. Oncologists are notorious for always being willing to recommend to our patients one more course of treatment, even when the chances of success are negligible.

One grim joke even poses the question, “Why are coffins nailed shut?” The answer: “To keep oncologists from giving another round of chemotherapy.”

This unflattering stereotype is unfortunately backed by data. In one analysis of patients with a cancer diagnosis treated at one of 280 cancer clinics in the United States between 2011 and 2020, 39 percent received cancer therapy within 30 days of death, and 17 percent within two weeks of dying, with no decrease in those rates from 2015 to 2019.

My patient had received his leukemia diagnosis five years earlier, and initially, following chemotherapy, his cancer had entered a remission. He and his parents were farmers from Latin America and relocated at the time to the United States to focus on his treatment. When the leukemia returned after a year, he underwent a bone-marrow transplant, and that seemed to do the trick, at least for a while.

But then it reared its ugly head a couple of years later, and we worked to slay it with yet more chemotherapy and another transplant.

That victory was short-lived, though, and multiple rounds of unsuccessful treatment later, here we were. The last course had decimated his blood counts, landing him in the hospital with an infection, a bad one that he had barely survived.

Does it help patients live longer or better?

Giving chemotherapy toward the end of life would be justifiable if we benefited our patients by enabling them to live longer, or live better. While that’s our hope, it often isn’t the case.

Other studies have shown that patients with cancer who receive treatment at the end of life are more likely to be admitted to the hospital and even the intensive care unit, less likely to have meaningful goals-of-care discussions with their health-care team, and have worse quality and duration of life.

Recognizing this, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has identified giving chemotherapy within two weeks of death as a poor-quality indicator that may adversely affect payments to hospitals. As a consequence, cancer doctors are discouraged from offering treatment to patients at the end of life, and can get in trouble with hospital administrators for doing so.

Despite the CMS measure, though, over the past three years the percentage of patients treated at the end of life hasn’t changed much, with one recent study actually showing an increase in patients treated.

Why do we do it? Perhaps optimism is part of our nature, and what draws us to a career in oncology. I focus on the positive, and that may actually help my patients. Other studies have shown that optimism in people with cancer is associated with better quality of life, and even longer survival.

And perhaps the data on giving chemotherapy close to a person’s last days on Earth, and the CMS quality metric, are unfair, and insensitive to the realities of how doctors and patients make decisions.

I stared back into the eyes of my young patient and then into those of his father, who was about my age. He looked kindly, with a thick, bushy white mustache, a red tattersall shirt, and work jeans. This man adored his son, accompanying him to every appointment, and always warmly clasped my right hand with both of his in thanks for our medical care — a gesture I felt unworthy to receive, given my inability to eradicate his son’s leukemia.

If our roles were reversed, how would I react if my son’s cancer doctor told me that the option for more chemotherapy was off the table, as CMS recommends, given the less than 10 percent chance that it would work, and the much higher likelihood that it could harm?

Wouldn’t I demand that the doctor pursue any and all means necessary to save my son’s life? Patients often do, and studies have shown that patients with cancer that has returned are quite willing to receive toxic cancer treatments that promise minimal potential benefit.

We discussed giving another round of chemotherapy, though I told my patient and his family that I was reluctant to administer it given the vanishingly slim chance that it would help. We also talked about my patient enrolling in a clinical trial of an experimental drug. And finally, we talked about palliative care and hospice, my preferred path forward.

“You’ve given us a lot to think about,” my patient told me as he and his family got up to leave, even smiling a bit at the understatement. His father came over to me and clasped my hand warmly, as usual.

But a couple of days later, despite how well he looked in clinic, my patient developed an infection that landed him in the intensive care unit. If I had given him chemotherapy, we would have blamed the treatment for the hospitalization.

But the cause actually lay with his underlying cancer, which had compromised his immune system, making him more vulnerable to infections. This time, my patient became sick enough that he decided enough was enough, and he accepted palliative care.

For many of my patients at the end of life who doggedly pursue that “one more round” of chemotherapy, a hospitalization becomes the sentinel event convincing them that the side effects of treatment just aren’t worth it anymore. It’s then no wonder people die so soon after their final treatment and time in the hospital.

It isn’t justifiable to give people with cancer chemotherapy when it is futile, just to be able to say “we tried something.” That’s what the CMS quality metric is trying to prevent. But in doing so, it shouldn’t interfere with a patient’s opportunity to come to that decision themselves.

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