Category: Healing and Helping Professionals

Posted on

Ten Facts About Medical Aid in Dying

By David R. Grube, MD

Introduction

Oregon’s 1994 Death with Dignity Act (ORS 127.8 ff) was the nation’s first law authorizing mentally capable, terminally ill adults with 6 months or less to live to request a doctor’s prescription for medication they could decide to take to peacefully end their suffering if it became unbearable.

It was enacted in 1994 and taken into effect in 19971. Since then, 6 more states—Washington, Montana, Vermont, California, Colorado, and Hawaii (Hawaii’s law does not take effect until Jan. 1, 2019) and the District of Columbia (DC)—have authorized medical aid in dying. Pies and Hanson, in a recent article in MD Magazine® (July 7, 2018), presented 12 myths (sic) about this medical practice.2
 
I practiced family medicine in a small rural Oregon town from 1977 to 2012. In 1999, a patient asked me if I would honor his request for a “death with dignity.” He was a long-time patient who was dying of cancer; he had had surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy, but his cancer was incurable and advanced. He was enrolled in hospice, but his symptoms became intolerable, leading to his request to me.

At that time, I had been in practice for more than 20 years. I did ultimately prescribe the aid-in-dying medication, and he died very peacefully at home with his wife and children at his bedside. They continue to thank me now, almost 20 years later.
 
Those of us who have participated in the practice of medical aid in dying have a different perspective than those who theorize about it. Pies and Hanson cite a 20-year-old article3 regarding the psychological and emotional effects upon US oncologists who participate in euthanasia and PAS. In fact, euthanasia—which unlike medical aid in dying requires someone other than the dying patient to administer the medication—is illegal in the United States. In my role as the National Medical Director for Compassion & Choices and our Doc2Doc consultation program, I speak to scores of physicians who have practiced medical aid in dying. 

All of them are sincere, all are compassionate, none of them take this action lightly, and none have reported instances of regret or depression. 
 
1) People who request medical aid in dying usually do so because they are experiencing loss of dignity, anhedonia, and inability to control the “end of their life story.”
 
Pies and Hanson are correct in reporting that pain is not usually in the top 3 reasons why individuals request medical aid in dying in both Oregon and California. Autonomy is no. 1: these individuals are suffering, dying persons who feel that they have no control over their imminent death (which their physicians confirm). They do not want to die in a hospital. They are knowledgeable of their options. They do not want to depend upon others for symptom management, and indeed, by their own report, their symptoms are unmanageable.

Pies and Hansen report that many patients who request medical aid in dying are clinically depressed, but this assertion is false. By law, they are required to be evaluated for the mental capacity to make rational decisions by their physician and a second (consulting) physician. In addition, they often are in hospice, so they also are evaluated by their hospice medical director, their hospice nurse, their chaplain, their social worker, etc. They do not have a major depressive disorder; rather, they are grieving normally. They cannot “be successfully treated, once properly diagnosed.”1 They are terminal.
 
2) In Oregon, 6 other states, and D.C. with similar laws, there are adequate safeguards to ensure proper application of medical aid in dying. 
 
Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, now in effect for 2 decades, is analyzed annually by the Oregon Health Authority1 and it has never needed to be changed. It adequately protects individuals from coercion, abuse, or inappropriate use.  Why is this statement true? There are core safeguards in place to protect vulnerable populations, so many in fact that they are also recognized as significant barriers for dying people to access the law. Many dying patients in Oregon are unable to utilize the Death with Dignity Act because they die before the entire process can be completed and doctors can be reluctant to practice because of the paperwork.  
 
3) The conversation about the option of medical aid in dying is palliative in and of itself
 
A healthy doctor-patient relationship is founded upon open communication and trust. In end-of-life care, the ability to discuss all options allows for exploration, and hopefully, fulfillment of the patient’s wishes and values. Many patients and doctors discuss medical aid in dying, even if the patient ultimately does not make a request for a prescription. Physicians who are willing to openly explore a patient’s requests can learn much that can help her or him to provide quality care at the end of life.

In all jurisdictions where this palliative, end-of-life care option is authorized, approximately two-thirds of patients who go through the process required by the Oregon Death with Dignity Act ultimately take aid-in-dying medication; one-third do not take the medication,1 but they want to know that they have the option to use the medication if needed, hence, they are palliated.
 
4) Not all suffering can be satisfactorily treated with palliative medicine or hospice care
 
Quality hospice care and palliative care have improved the end-of-life experience of thousands of patients, and advances in end-of-life care continue. More improvement and resources should be dedicated to this cause. But not all suffering can be assuaged. Suffering is defined by the patient, not the doctor.
 
5) Doctors who conscientiously oppose medical aid in dying are free not to practice it.
 
Pies and Hanson discuss conscientious objection to medical aid in dying “in theory” based upon “guidelines.” Physicians who are not willing to participate in end-of-life care option are free not to practice it if it conflicts with their conscience; there is no law that requires otherwise. However, a licensed physician is bound to practice professionally and under the standards of care in their location. A professional “puts the patient first.

If a licensed physician (who does not support a patient’s option to decide to use medical aid in dying) has a request by a patient for this end-of-life care option, her or his obligation is to refer the patient to another physician for evaluation of the request. Ironically, many physicians in Oregon who do support this option for their dying patients, are unable to provide it because they are employed by healthcare systems that prohibit their doctors from practicing it. Thus, rather than physicians being coerced to practice medical aid in dying, they are prevented from honoring their dying patient’s request for it.
 
6) Language matters: medical aid in dying should not be called “suicide,” or “assisted suicide”
 
Legally, in all jurisdictions where medical aid in dying is authorized, “it is not suicide, homicide, euthanasia, or mercy killing.”1  

David Pollack MD, a psychiatrist at Oregon Health & Science University School of Medicine in Portland, OR, stated that a “growing body of evidence clearly distinguishes the characteristics of persons who commit suicide resulting from mental illness from those of terminally ill persons who request medical aid in dying.

“These differences include the type and severity of psychological symptoms, degree of despair, reasons for wishing to end one’s life, communicativeness regarding their wishes and fears, degree of personal isolation, openness about the wish and intended method to end one’s life, and the impact on the person’s family or support system following the person’s death.”4  

Furthermore, there is no place in end-of-life care for language that is hurtful, angry, shaming, or that causes guilt. Language matters.

7) People requesting medical aid in dying are carefully screened to rule out depression that impairs judgment
 
Pies and Hanson are correct in reporting that most medical aid-in-dying statutes do not require a professional mental health examination, “except when the participating physician is concerned and decides to do so.” Such a requirement is unnecessary because doctors are experts in evaluating the mental capacity of their patients to make informed healthcare decisions.

Doctors make these assessments every day in routine matters and matters of life and death. And if 1 of the 2 doctors evaluating the mental capacity of a patient requesting medical aid in dying wants a third mental capacity evaluation by a mental health professional, they can easily request it. It’s important to note that all of these terminally ill patients and their families are sad, and normally grieving. But most patients do not have mental illness or a major depressive disorder. By virtue of their State Medical License, physicians who are involved in primary care are competent to diagnose mental illness, including depression that causes impaired decision-making.
 
8) In the United States, only people with terminal illness are eligible for medical aid in dying
 
In Oregon and in all jurisdictions where medical aid in dying is authorized, individuals who receive an aid-in-dying prescription must meet the eligibility criteria, including having a terminal illness. This diagnosis is determined by the attending physician and the consulting physician. In each case, these licensed doctors consider the individual situation.

A diabetic who does not want to take insulin is not a candidate; someone with anorexia nervosa, by definition, has a mental illness. Advanced dementia precludes participation because the patient is not mentally capable of making their own healthcare decisions. When a patient requests medical aid in dying, the physician investigates all of the intricacies of the request. If the patient has a disease that can be reasonably treated (diabetes, early cancer, etc.), this end-of-life care option is not appropriate.

Hence, the value of 2 physicians working in concert is not only the case, but also the law, in Oregon.

9) The basic requirements for medical aid in dying have not changed in more than 20 years

After more than 20 years of medical aid-in-dying experience in Oregon, there now is ample accumulated experience to show that the law has been safely and successfully implemented.5 In fact, ORS 127.8, the Death with Dignity Act, has not been changed, amended, or altered. Those who theorize that abuses are possible seem more concerned with “what if” than with “what is.” Experience and evidence outweighs speculation.

In point of fact, the practice of medical aid in dying in Oregon (and in others states with similar laws in effect) has catalyzed improvement in end-of-life care, a much broader discussion of end-of-life care issues, more frequent conversations between physicians and patients about their end-of-life care wishes and goals, doctor-patient relationships, and the awareness of and participation in hospice and palliative care services.

10) Since Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act took effect in 1997, more people have not died, but fewer have suffered

Since the Oregon Death with Dignity Act took effect in 1997, a total of 1967 Oregonians have had prescriptions written under the law, and 1275 patients have died from ingesting the medications.

During 2017, 143 patients used medical aid in dying, and the estimated rate of Death with Dignity Act deaths was 39.9 per 10,000 total deaths,1 which is a similar percentage to previous years.  All of these patients were about to die (had a prognosis of 6 months or less to live) and had the comfort of knowing that they could determine the final chapter of their life if their suffering became unbearable.  

Pies and Hanson concluded that “it is critical that physicians inform themselves as regards the actual nature and function … of medical aid-in-dying legislation.” I heartily agree. However, their “first step” is to “recognize and challenge the many myths that surround these…laws.”

I believe that a better first step is to learn the facts about medical aid in dying, not theoretic myths. Louis Pasteur, MD, wrote, “One does not ask of one who suffers: What is your country and what is your religion? One merely says: You suffer, that is enough for me.” A dying patient needs respect, and our comfort. We may have thought that we were trained as “healers,” but when a cure is no longer possible, care and comfort are paramount.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Speak freely about realities of death, experts urge

Taboos around death and dying are increasing the risk of elderly patients “on their dying journey” being subjected to unwanted and invasive medical procedures against their wishes, experts say.

By Lucy Stone

Associate Professor Magnolia Cardona, from the Gold Coast’s Bond University, has led a PhD study into the use of rapid response system treatments on elderly hospital patients nearing end of life.

Professor Cardona said the research, published in the Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Public Safety, studied the files of more than 700 patients who received calls for medical emergency teams during hospitalisation at a large Sydney teaching hospital.

A medical emergency team usually consists of two or three specialists from the intensive care unit focused on maintaining life when a patient is in a hospital ward.

The research further focused on patients aged 80 and over, and found that 40 per cent were subjected to invasive procedures such as intubation, intensive monitoring, intravenous medications, transplants and resuscitation attempts.

Ten per cent of those patients already had medical orders in place limiting treatment, or requesting do-not-resuscitate.

“Those orders … are usually issued by their doctors in consultation with families,” Professor Cardona said.

Professor Cardona said the research showed the conflict between increasingly rapid medical advances, public perception of the capabilities of medical experts to revive or prolong life, and the emotive issue of death.

The findings were similar to those of 2017 studies conducted in Europe, but Professor Cardona said the Australian researchers had expected to find a smaller percentage of such incidents.

The research found that elderly patients in their last year of life were frequent users of ambulance and hospital services, including intensive care units, and that health professionals often felt under pressure to administer “aggressive” treatments.

“Health professionals do not always fully discuss a prognosis with families, or may lack the confidence to discuss patients’ preferences for care and treatment at the end of life,” the research said.

“They may decide to continue intensive treatment based on concerns about the family’s legal or emotional reactions, or in an attempt to avoid an in-hospital death, generally perceived as a ‘failure’.”

“Often these frequently heroic medical interventions do not improve patient survival and instead prolong suffering and adversely affect the quality of death.”

The study found that while patients under 80 years of age may benefit from such aggressive techniques, patients over 80 were less likely to benefit.

Professor Cardona also said it was critical that families and elderly people, or people with terminal illnesses, had open conversations about the decisions ahead, and wrote on paper their personal wishes, or appointed someone trusted as their medical representative.

Due to techniques such as CPR being treated as a cure-all on television shows and movies, Professor Cardona said the public often had some misconceptions about the safety and appropriateness of such techniques, particularly for elderly people.

She said the research would hopefully encourage both families and medical professionals to have fresh conversations about patient needs and values, and ensure the wishes of elderly patients were respected as they neared the end of life.

Professor Cardona said she hoped medical professionals could also think critically about the “do no harm” principle when faced with patients facing death of natural causes.

“The conclusion of the study that perhaps clinicians need to take a step back when they identify these flags of imminent death and offer a different alternative of management,” she said.

“That is the pathway of care of comfort care, and that includes giving the patient pain relief, other symptom control, psychosocial support and grief counselling for the families.

“And all of these of course preceded by an honest conversation with the patient and family about the poor prognosis, the inevitability of death and the fact that not every death should be considered a failure.

“Death is just a natural part of the life cycle.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Travel Guide to the End of Life

An interview with Sallie Tisdale, death and dying educator

Sallie Tisdale

By Sallie Tisdale

“I have never died, so this entire book is a fool’s advice,” writes Sallie Tisdale at the start of her latest work, Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them): A Practical Perspective on Death and Dying. However, there’s wisdom in knowing that you don’t know it all, and Tisdale’s enchanting prose searches as often as it instructs. In addition to being a writer, Tisdale is a Buddhist practitioner and teacher, a nurse, and an end-of-life educator who leads workshops on preparing for death; her depth of experience at the side of the dying is apparent throughout.

In these essays, Tisdale tells of the death of her Zen teacher, her mother, her close friend Carol, and others she has known, and asks questions many of us avoid: How do we define death? How do we manage physical pain or grief? Does our dignity depend on our health? This book, Tisdale writes, is meant to help you prepare for your own death and the deaths of those closest to you. It’s a travel guide to the end of life, a map of the territory, not a book of spiritual guidance. At its close, Tisdale even offers four appendixes for those seeking advice on the practicalities of death preparation. “My Death Plan,” “Advance Directives,” “Organ and Tissue Donation,” and “Assisted Death” prompt readers to consider their preferences for pain management, rituals and services, burial place, funerary rights, and more.

“If you die once, you will never have to die again,” Tisdale told Tricycle in February, recalling a teaching she heard when she was a young Zen student. At the time, she found the sentence perplexing. But as her practice progressed, the deep sense of release that she experienced—a “falling away of body and mind”—encouraged her to continue, and eventually led to the understanding that one can meet death as wholly as one aims to meet life. In the interview that follows, she tells Tricycle how she cultivated familiarity with her own mind while tending to her patients and loved ones, and why considering our own death just might make us happier.
—Marie Scarles, Associate Editor

Why did you feel compelled to write this book? I’ve been leading workshops and small groups about preparing for death at my Zen center for about a decade. I started to hear that people in other groups wanted to see the syllabus and material I was using. So I thought I could develop it into something that would be comprehensive and useful for people.

Preparing oneself to die is an inescapable challenge. It is also part and parcel of religious practice. I’m struck by the fact that as Buddhists we know this and yet it doesn’t come up in conversation all that often. We self-censor. We think, Oh, if you were a really good Buddhist you wouldn’t have those feelings, you’d wouldn’t have that fear, you wouldn’t be confused, you wouldn’t be struggling. You’d have it all figured out. This is very damaging to us. Our practice is about authenticity, rigorous self-examination, and honesty. If we’re honest, we’re going to admit that none of us is quite ready to die.

In the book, you write that when we’re speaking with someone who is dying, we need to avoid telling them what they should do or how they should feel. Are these “shoulds” another form of censorship? I’m going through this with a friend right now. I was with him last night, and one of the things that he’s really struggling with is his deep fear of self-extinction. I have to bite my tongue not to try to reassure him, not to try to take the fear away from him, but to let him explore it and feel it. It’s his, and his perspective on it is very different from mine. It’s not my life.

It’s so easy for us to pop in and say, “You should be feeling this,” or “Of course, you want me to do and say this.” But when we do, we’re missing the fact that nothing is more intimately the result of your whole life than how you meet death. We have to notice our urge to put our own veneer on someone else’s experience.

I’m sure I’m less uncertain and awkward than most of the people in the room, but I am still awkward and uncertain at times at that bedside: I’m not sure how to answer a question, or I’m looking for comfort with the silence, knowing there’s nothing to be done about certain things. I’m still just trying to meet the experience all the time, and stuff comes up for me, of course. It does for all of us. But it’s really myself that I’m encountering, the ways I think it should be. This is the way I want it to be for me. That fundamental egotism is still there, even at somebody else’s deathbed. You have to continually notice this fundamental egoism.

I imagine this process of getting to know your own experience—as well your nursing work—has helped you navigate encounters with death. Of course, every death is different. Yet there are remarkable similarities. We’re not that different from each other. You can really predict and expect certain things with the deaths from chronic illness. Even with sudden deaths, once the moment of death is reached, it’s the same moment. It’s something you recognize if you’ve seen it before. It’s like that line in the Theravada version of the Mahapari-nirvana Sutra where Ananda says that the hair on the back of his neck stood up when the Buddha died. There’s something we recognize there that goes really deep.

I also want to say that I had a lot of fun writing this book. I feel a lot of joy in the face of the preciousness of life—a kind of silly joy at times. Not only are there these rituals of crying and role change that every culture has around the deathbed, there’s also a deep worldwide culture of laughing at death, making fun of it, joking about it. I think it’s because it puts us face-to-face with the deep love that we feel for each other.

This reminds me of a 2007 study you mention in the book that says thinking about our death makes us happier. Yes, but they explained this happiness in a different way. They’re talking about terror management theory—the psychological belief that it is fundamental to human nature to be terrified of death and that you can’t escape the terror. Terror management theory states that you can’t not be afraid of death. I don’t believe that. I think we are all afraid of it until we know it. When we really know it, that’s what spares us from the terror. Terror management theory says that this is part of being human, and that we do a tremendous number of things to distract and protect ourselves from this fear. I think we’re healthier than that. In the Buddhist sense, we have the potential to be as healthy and whole around this as around everything else in our life.

An awareness of death comes and goes. We’re hyperaware of it at one moment, maybe when someone close to us is dying, and then it fades away again. How do we get to know death, or maintain this sense of awareness? I’m a Zen practitioner, so the language I’d use here is “the falling away of body and mind.” If we become familiar with what it means to arise and fall in every moment, if we become familiar with the emptiness of the purported self and we come to accept ourselves as a loosely cohering set of compounded things, we don’t believe in the self all the time. Of course, we constantly forget and remember this again, but over time we do become more familiar with ourselves as impermanent, and eventually we come to see the glory of that. The grace of impermanence is that we belong to everything, that we are not separated from anything, that we are not isolated. As I say in the book, we may be waves on an ocean, but we are waves that know we are waves. That’s what I mean by really getting to know death. It’s not just spending time at a bedside, being with people who are facing death, getting to know your reactions to it. In a practical sense, this can be very helpful. But the most effective thing in getting to know death isn’t being with dying people, but sensing myself as being a continually dying person.

There’s a saying I’ve been told as long as I’ve been practicing: “If you die once, you will never have to die again.” I heard that when I was very young, and I didn’t know what it meant, but I do now. When I first experienced the falling away of body and mind, even a tiny bit, it was as though I had been a tightly wound spring, and I thought, I’m going to continue to unwind forever. There was such relief and relaxation and peace in the realization that this constriction would keep letting go. I could just look forward to more and more relaxation. Throughout my life I have continued to feel that spring unwind, a little bit at a time. We have as many lifetimes as we need to get there. [Laughs.]

Still, I will feel afraid when it’s my time, when I get that bad diagnosis and I’m on that doctor’s table. I’m sure there will be resistance and fear. So let’s admit it: The resistance is there. The denial arises. Admit that. But there will also be curiosity and wonder at the point of facing death, just because I have looked at it enough.

Your experience as both a dharma teacher and a nurse comes through in the book: you’re writing from the perspective of someone who has witnessed countless deaths. Yes, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t feel uncertainty and awkwardness as well. We bring our whole self there. It’s significantly easier for me to do this with a client than a friend.

When my mother was dying, my siblings looked to me like, Well, you can take care of her. And I had to say, No. I’m the daughter here. I have to be the daughter here. Sometimes, no matter how much practical experience you have, you have to bow to the fact that this is not your role this time. You need to be the daughter or the mother or the friend. Most of us will lose some friends, our parents, our siblings—but not that often. So it’s always okay to be who we are in these moments. It’s always okay to have the weaknesses and the confusion and the questions that we have. It’s always all right to just say, “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I’m scared. I’m worried. I’m afraid of this. I’m not sure what to do next.” It’s okay for all of those feelings to be there. We really will trip ourselves up if we think we have to have it all together.

I was thinking about this last night while sitting at the bedside of my friend, someone I’ve known for 40 years. He’s really scared to die. We learn in our practice to deal with our own suffering. We learn to recognize other people’s suffering, and we learn to see the sources of suffering. But it’s really hard to learn that you can’t take somebody’s suffering away from them. It’s important that we remember the bodhisattva Guanyin, she who hears the cries of the world. She’s the witness; she’s not fixing everything all the time—she is just seeing it. There’s so much we can do for each other, but we can’t do it all. It’s not possible to entirely comfort and console another person. They have—we have—to feel pain. It is part of this life.

Caretakers’ Dos and Don’ts

An excerpt from Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them)

If you are dying, you can say anything you want. You can say it when you want, and to whom you want. And you don’t have to say anything at all. Most of what I offer here is for the visitor, the companion, the helper. You have to follow some rules.

Think about how you explain ordinary information: the washing machine is on the fritz, we’re out of milk, I got a parking ticket today. Then think about how you communicate more urgent news: I wrecked the car. The power’s out. It’s different. Consider how you react in an argument. That’s different, too. Do you shut down, stop thinking? Do you start to cry or yell or leave the room? We all have a pattern for difficult conversations. If you are going to spend time with a dying person, know how you handle emotional scenes. What scares you? What makes it easier? Make a list. Practice!

Listening isn’t that complicated. It’s hard, but it’s not complicated. Few of us communicate really well. We think explaining ourselves is key, but listening is the most important part. Half the energy of caring for a dying person is listening, really listening. We are driven to think of ourselves first, and spend half the time appearing to listen while we prepare what we are going to say when it is our turn to speak. So: Listen. Say: This sounds very difficult. Say: I can tell how much thinking you’ve done about this matter. Say: Um-hmm. Tell me more. Keep bringing your mind back to the present moment when you stray. Invite detail. Ask questions and make it clear that you want to know. Anxiety makes it difficult to remember information, so repeat yourself if necessary. Speak in a calm and unhurried way. Reflect what you’ve heard, because you might have heard wrong: It sounds like you are saying you are afraid. Clarify, because you might have heard wrong: Let me make sure I understand. I think you are saying . . . If you can do these things, you are almost there. Be calm. Be nonjudgmental. Repeat.

If you are spending time with a person who is dying, you be­come a protector. You are the defender of modesty, privacy, silence, laughter, and many other things that can be lost in the daily tasks. You are the guardian of that person’s desires.

You will become a gatekeeper. Everyone needs a gatekeeper! Be the one who can say with a smile, Goodbye, Aunt Lucille. The one who can reach out a hand to the visitor and say, Time to go. We’ll call when we’re ready for another visit! while walking to the door.

Visitors come in many forms. Lots of friends will just drop in for a cup of tea and a few innings of the baseball game and take the garbage out when they go. Hurray for those friends. But you may also meet what the writer Glennon Doyle Melton calls the Fixer. This is the person who is certain that my situation is a question and she knows the answer. The Fixer is on the edge of her seat, ready with the solution. Melton went through a difficult breakup, and so she also knows the Comparer: the visitor who only appears to listen, who is just waiting for the chance to explain how his experience, or his nephew’s experience, or his aunt’s boyfriend’s cousin’s experience, compares to yours. Sooner or later a visitor arrives with what I think of as one-downmanship: the person with the sad face who spends their entire visit explaining why their troubles are worse than yours.

Set boundaries—for visitors, but also for yourself. Start with setting the boundaries for the visit, and do this every time. Say, I can stay for an hour, or I’ll be here until dinner, when Mary arrives. Before you leave, tell the person when you will be back. This removes the uncertainty, the unbounded edges that can make for a stressful conversation. A boundary gives both of you a space in which to be together. If you’re going to be coming regularly, you might offer a frank contract: when you will be there, for how long, to do what. If you can’t stand daytime television, can you watch Days of Our Lives anyway? If you don’t like cigarettes, can you sit easily with someone who smokes? Don’t say: I told you to quit smoking.

There are lots of ways to help besides making soup and sweep­ing the floor. (Those are often good things to do.) You can help people write letters or arrange a meeting. Offer to buy groceries or do the laundry, drive to an appointment or organize the bills. Offer only what you can deliver: I will stay with you through the night, or I will mail these letters for you. Be specific. (Then do what you say you will do. Not to put too fine a point on it, but you only get one shot at this.) Write all these things down and put it on the refrigerator. Your friend has enough to remember without keeping track of the calendar. Don’t say: Be sure to keep me posted.

Ask permission for everything. Be aware that you have the power here. (Be willing to discuss this fact.) Ask permission until your friend says, Quit asking for permission. Ask if a person wants to talk before you plunge in with the news of the day. Would they rather listen to music or play checkers or watch The Walking Dead? Do they want to take a shower? Do they want to eat something? If so, be clear. Vanilla or chocolate ice cream? is easier to answer than Is there anything you want to eat? Always ask for permission, but give permission, too. Permission to be sad, to be angry, to be sleepy or bored. To be something other than dying. To die.

Ask about privacy and confidentiality, favorite foods, how they want the room to be set up. Lights up, or down? Door open or closed? Music on or off? Agree on a signal for ending the visit. Know when to leave. Know when to be quiet.

You have to be honest with the dying person, but above all with yourself. There is nothing else worth doing here. Honesty is generosity, because when you are honest, you offer what you can truly give. Be honest about your own emotional state, without burdening the sick person. Resist your own impulses, your need for consolation, your wish for power, your urge for denial.

Know your limits. You have to grieve, and that means you have to go away sometimes. If you are hungry or need a rest, take care of yourself. If you’re anxious or worried, admit it. (Just don’t ask your friend to fix your feeling.) There’s a tricky balance between keeping your feelings in check and being authentic. You may try to downplay things, especially tears and anger, but you don’t have to hide them completely. On the other hand, you may be surprised by jealousy, irritation, and loneliness, and these are really yours to sort out elsewhere. Don’t say: Why didn’t you call me first? Why did you tell her before me?

Knowing these things is half the battle. The other half is watching and working with what happens.

A person who is ill may try to trigger your reactions. People may be testing whether you can handle talking about a difficult subject. Good listening goes a long way toward showing acceptance, and so does an open posture. Don’t stand over a person in bed or bustle around when they’re talking. Settle down, relax, keep your posture open, and try not to touch or soothe the difficulties away. You might feel a powerful urge to soothe painful feelings, to cover up. Don’t change the subject.

If there is a topic you absolutely cannot discuss, make that clear. Can you be still while a person cries? Don’t put a person in the difficult position of upsetting his caregiver. Don’t hide all your feelings under a bushel, but be a grown-up and manage your grown-up pain.

A person overwhelmed with illness may displace difficult feelings and shift attention away from the problem she is afraid to face. The big problem at hand. The ego is often about seven years old and prone to distractions when uncomfortable, like a kid who spills his milk just as you ask whether his chores are done. Adaptation takes many forms. Some people rationalize destructive behavior, ignore consequences. Some people will regress under stress, reverting to behaviors they used when they were much younger, refusing to take responsibility and looking for another person to act as the adult. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that; we all like someone else to be the adult sometimes. Just notice if it’s a pattern, and be careful. Watch the urge to become parental under stress, to take charge and try to manage the situation. Taking charge protects you from having to feel hopeless, but may not be what the person really needs.

Balance affect. If the person is hurried and talkative, you can speak slowly and listen. If they are withdrawn, you can start by doing the talking. If they are pacing, sit still. Notice incongruence. Is the person smiling while they tell a sad story? Are they clenching their fists while they say everything is fine? Dying tends to create incongruent feelings. You don’t have to challenge this. The person is working things out. Just be congruent in yourself. Don’t be afraid to cry a little sometimes; that’s congruent.

One way I might manage the hardest parts of being sick is to intellectualize my feelings. Perhaps I talk about the kind and brand of walker I want and ask you to check on prices. But I never say how it feels to need a walker (or a burial shroud). I may complain about how long it takes you to bring me lunch because I don’t want you to notice that I need help getting up from my chair. I don’t want to notice it, either. If I get angry at you for being late, I can briefly forget how it feels to need your help in the first place. Humans deflect when things hurt, and we are quick to project our struggles onto other people, using another as a kind of surrogate. I may talk about how Uncle Mario needs to use a walker now. I’m not just distracting you; I’m also testing you. I’m learning important information about how you feel about people who need walkers.

What not to say: Don’t talk like that. Let’s just talk about something happy. One of the most common ways we defend ourselves is by denial. We may simply deny what we’ve been told is true. Things not to say: My mother’s biopsy was negative. You look fine. Are you sure you’re sick? Denial is normal, but notice your own. A dying person may deny the truth for a long time. How often do we deny another’s denial? How often do we try to drag a person to the place where we think they should be, instead of meeting a person where he or she is? This is where open-ended responses help so much. Reflect on what you hear. Ask for more detail. Ask for what it means. Listen.

♦

From Advice for Future Corpses by Sallie Tisdale. Copyright © 2018 by Sallie Tisdale. Reprinted by permission of Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Palliative care for the living — more education is needed

By Drs. Angira Patel and Kelly Michelson

A pregnant mother’s 20-week ultrasound often brings feelings of elation and anticipation as she learns the baby’s sex or sees the baby move in her belly.

But when that ultrasound shows a heart defect in her unborn child that will require multiple surgeries and could cause learning difficulties, necessitate a heart transplant, or even lead to an early death, everything changes for her and for her family. Expectations of the future start to change.

Children with complicated medical problems such as heart defects, severe seizure disorders or cancer need care from multiple specialists over their lifetime. As specialists in pediatric cardiology and pediatric intensive care medicine, we have seen too often that one key group — the palliative care team — is often not included.

One reason for this is that many people inaccurately think of palliative care as only care for the dying.

The National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care describes palliative care as an interdisciplinary approach to “patient and family-centered care that optimizes quality of life by anticipating, preventing, and treating suffering.” There is no mention of dying, death or end-of-life care.

Important legislation under consideration now seeks to expand opportunities for interdisciplinary education, training and research in palliative care. The Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is headed to the Senate. This legislation will support educational efforts that inform patients and health-care providers about the benefits of palliative care in supporting individuals with serious illness.

People with complicated medical problems and serious illness need medical specialists. Just as heart doctors treat heart problems and lung doctors treat lung problems, palliative care treats the suffering that results from serious illness.

Sometimes the reasons for suffering are obvious, as with a cancer patient’s excruciating bone pain or unending nausea. Palliative care providers use both medications and less conventional treatments, such as acupuncture or music therapy, to alleviate difficult-to-control symptoms.

Other times, suffering from serious illness can’t be seen easily. A new study published in BMJ (originally the British Medical Journal) found that 20 percent of patients with cancer have depression and 10 percent have anxiety. Often unnoticed or sometimes ignored, these complications can decrease survival.

To be sure, suffering comes in many forms – physical, emotional, spiritual. Many contend that physicians should focus on things such as physical bodily pain, and leave more existential suffering to chaplains or other religious figures. That is why palliative care requires an interdisciplinary team that includes social workers, chaplains, music and art therapists, nurses, physicians and others.

But palliative care providers can only help if they are invited to participate. Some physicians and parents may avoid introducing palliative care because they feel it is tantamount to “giving up hope.”

Yet, in some cases, palliative care may help extend life. In a study in China of adults with metastatic non–small-cell lung cancer, those who received early palliative care lived longer than those who received standard cancer care.

Such improved outcomes are not limited to the patients themselves. A new study published in Cardiology in the Young showed that mothers of children with a serious congenital heart defect (called hypoplastic left heart syndrome) who received early palliative care had less anxiety and improved family relationships compared to mothers who received regular care.

While some physicians may resist involving palliative care, many patients report they are open to the idea. A recent study of oncology patients published in the Journal of American Medical Association network showed, “very few patients or parents in this study expressed negative attitudes toward early palliative care.”

Of course, many patients with serious illness may not need palliative care. Some health-care providers might want to manage all aspects of their patients’ care. Certainly, all physician should have skills to treat difficult symptoms, address emotional challenges, and conduct difficult conversations. But as decision making and suffering become more and more complicated, involving clinicians with specific expertise can make a huge difference.

Unfortunately, access to quality palliative care services is lacking. One-third, or 802 U.S. hospitals with 50 or more beds, report no palliative care services. The Center to Advance Palliative Care gave one-third of states a grade of C or D based on inadequate access to palliative care.

To improve access to palliative care, more health-care providers need this training. According to the data from the National Palliative Care Registry, 1 to 1.8 million patients who could benefit from palliative care services, are not receiving it.

Just 140 existing palliative care training programs graduate only 360 physicians yearly. This is nowhere near enough providers to meet this massive unmet need. And one study published in Palliative Medicine shows that the need will double by 2040.

Fortunately, clinicians and families don’t need to participate in formal training programs to access palliative care education. The National Institutes of Health has a campaign to improve understanding for both patients and providers.

The American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine website provides links to research, videos, training options, and more. The Center to AdvancePalliative Care provides tools, training, and technical assistance to build and sustain palliative care in all health care settings.

Palliative care must not be an afterthought, or a consideration after all other possibilities in care are exhausted. It is urgent that palliative care be accessible to everyone regardless of age at the onset of medical treatment. That way patients can be offered the best possible care and outcomes.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Meet the ‘end-of-life doulas’ guiding people to their death

By Emily Ford

Lizzie Neville is an ‘end-of-life doula’ who helps people prepare for death.

Doula is a term traditionally associated with childbirth, describing someone who helps a woman before, during or after childbirth.

But ‘death doula’ Lizzie, from Alton, Hampshire, was hired by Lowri Rylance, from Basingstoke, when her husband was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Posted on

Death doulas explain why everyone should have an end-of-life plan

Death doula Carmen Barnsley thinks people should talk more about death and be more informed about their options.

By Nicole Mills

A new breed of doulas are helping break down the fear around death, which they say shouldn’t be a confronting word.

Carmen Barnsley from Melbourne said just like birth doulas, death doulas were there to provide support, knowledge and assistance during times of upheaval and uncertainty.

“I find it is just a privilege and a humbling experience to be where life enters this world and when life leaves it,” the former nurse said.

“Death is just as amazing an experience as birth is, but we celebrate birth and we deny death.”

Ms Barnsley has had her own experience with death. Her son died when he was five months old.

While she was in the depths of numbing grief, the hospital handed over a Yellow Pages and told her and her husband they needed to pick a funeral parlour.

It was the first of many conversations she had during the grieving process that made her realise that as a society, we need to start doing death better.

“Some cultures do death beautifully. It’s a reflection of the person’s life, whereas I think we do it pretty poorly,” she said.

“The honest thing I can say about the doulas in my network is everyone has been through a personal process of death.

“A lot of the doulas who are coming from personal experiences are coming from terrible personal experiences and were seeking answers to improve it so that doesn’t happen to another person again.”

Emotions run high

Ms Barnsley said her colleagues came from all walks of life, having worked as hospital chaplains, accountants, social workers, celebrants and in the funeral industry.

She wants people to understand that knowledge is power, especially when it comes to death.

“A death doula isn’t about dying, it’s about allowing that individual to live until they die.

“I find when somebody puts a plan in place they will then live until they die, as ironic as that sounds.”

She recommends having conversations about death when you’re young and healthy instead of leaving it until death approaches when emotions run high.

“In the medical profession we have informed consent. I’d love for end-of-life issues to have informed choices.

“I don’t have a terminal disease but I have an advanced life care directive in place.

“My doctor has got a copy; this is probably a little bit touchy at the moment, but mine is actually up on the [My Health Record] healthcare site … so that any hospital in Australia can access my directive.”

The dying space

The main thing Ms Barnsley wants people to know is that death doesn’t have to be impersonal and there is no prescribed process to follow.

“You don’t need a funeral home, and some people don’t even know that,” she said.

“You may need to get one to transport someone, but you can have a loved one at home, you can organise transport straight to burial or cremation or whatever the person’s choice is.

“[In the past] a family did care for loved ones dying; it wasn’t in a hospital, it wasn’t medicalised, it wasn’t institutionalised and that was the norm.

“But there became a fear factor with death; let’s take it behind closed doors, we don’t talk about it, and there’s still people within our community that still have that.”

Melbourne death doula Bonita Ralph says talking about death is important.

Bonita Ralph first came into contact with doulas when she was pregnant with her first child.

Years later she read an article about the work of death doulas and realised it was a similar concept.

“For me it was a very lightbulb moment where I went, ‘Oh my God, of course that’s the same thing’,” she said.

“It’s the same sort of energy, the birthing space and the dying space.”

Ms Ralph comes from a community welfare and social justice background and sees the work of a death doula as an “in-between role” to help bridge the gap between the medical system and the community.

“I think a lot of people think that when you’re a doula, you’re sitting at the bedside of someone who is dying, and that hasn’t been my experience yet,” she said.

“I think that may come, it may not, and that’s OK because I think the doula role, for me, is broader than that.

“A doula is a companion, someone to walk with you, someone to support you in your choices and that absolutely applies to end-of-life care and death.”

Know your choices

Ms Ralph said one of the best things people could do was spend time reflecting on their own experience with death and understand where their knowledge about death comes from.

“I think we’re moving really slowly towards acknowledging that if we don’t have role models and experiences, then we actually don’t know what to do,” she said.

“They need to know that it’s not illegal to take someone who has died home. It’s not illegal to organise your own funeral. You don’t need a funeral director. It’s a lot of work and maybe I wouldn’t suggest it; logistically it’s tricky, but it’s not impossible.

“People do dig their own graves, the graves of family members. That is not impossible. There are options out there.”

Ms Ralph said these options would not be for everyone, and while Australia was blessed to have a good medical system, it was important to know your choices.

“I don’t want people to feel like they’re being forced or that there’s a right or wrong way to do death,” she said.

“Death is so important because if you don’t offer good support, if you don’t offer genuine response to what that family needs, there’s going to be complicated bereavement results because people don’t move through and grow with their grief. They can get stuck.”

She said often people found it easier to talk openly about death with a doula, but she always encouraged people to have those same conversations at home so their next of kin understood their wishes.

“Talking about death is not weird. It’s important.

“Ask anyone who has had to work through a complicated death process such as a tragic death or complicated families or someone has died and left everything undone and the family has to pick up the pieces.

“Have these conversations when you’re young and well and alive and engaged, and have these conversations ongoing because things change. Relationships change. Expectations change. So don’t be afraid and keep having that conversation.”

Events are being held across Australia on August 8 for Dying to Know Day, which aims to start conversations around death, dying and bereavement.

For more information and to find events near you visit the Dying to Know Day website.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

Posted on

Grief Massage Therapy Sessions Help Clients Cope

Grief might live in the heart, but it affects the body, too, contributing to pain and tightness.

By

Massage therapists Leslie Freeman and Annie Murphy created Bereavement Massage Therapy to help clients who were going through the grieving process.

“As we thought about ourselves and our past clients who had suffered losses, and shared their experiences with us, we remembered the stiffness of muscles, holding patterns in joints, their feelings of being at loose ends, a lack of grounding and vitality,” Freeman explained.

Freeman practices the technique at her Sarasota, Florida, office.

 

This type of session is part of a growing trend that recognizes massage therapy as an effective means of addressing stress and sadness, and helping clients find peace on the other side of the session.

Massage Consoles

Research reported in Science Daily found that receiving massage therapy for eight weeks after a loved one’s death helped them cope.

“Eighteen people, aged from 34-78, who had lost a relative to cancer took part in the study. They all said the massages provided consolation, helping them to balance the need to grieve and the need to adapt to life after the loss of their relative,” the article noted.

According to Freeman, Bereavement Massage Therapy is a distinct method that combines various modalities to address grief, and is not to be confused with end-of-life massage therapy.

Where the intent of end-of-life massage is to ease the transition of the dying from one realm to another, Bereavement Massage Therapy focuses on reconnecting the grieving client to their body.

To do this, the technique uses flat-hand vibration, gentle rocking and comfort holds to loosen and calm disconnected areas. Bereavement Massage Therapy also incorporates such techniques as reflexology, polarity, Swedish massage and craniosacral techniques.

“When a loved one dies, it’s like you crash and you have all these pieces,” said client Mirta LeCuona. “You don’t have an integrated body. With [Bereavement Massage Therapy], it’s like you start to put your body together. It’s like a wave around you that puts you back together.”

Freeman stresses that Bereavement Massage Therapy does not eliminate the grieving process or fix all pain issues. “Grief is a journey that each person has to take in their own time,” she explained.

Nor is it intended to fix pain issues, although pain relief can be a side effect as the client’s muscles relax.

Instead, Bereavement Massage Therapy is used to give the client a sense of balance during a time of upheaval. People who have received sessions report a sense of feeling lighter as a result.

“Afterward, I felt very calm and at ease, as if a weight had been lifted off of me,” said client Deb Fillion.

Before the session, the intake is key. “Our intake form is a little bit different than the average intake form that asks clients about injuries or illnesses or medications taken and that sort of thing,” said Freeman.

“We ask about appetite, sleep patterns, anything that the client wishes to tell us. We want to get an idea of what’s going on with them during the illness or loss and afterward.”

Putting the Pieces Back Together

It was while working with hospice patients that Freeman, who has a background as a certified nursing assistant, felt inspired to create Bereavement Massage Therapy.

She found the experience of working with the terminally ill extremely rewarding, but acknowledged that her deep inner reservoir of empathy presented an obstacle for that type of work. With 17 years of massage experience, and the hunch that her empathic energy was leading her elsewhere, she decided to meditate on a path forward. As she sifted through her memories of loss and its physical effects, she received a message.

“I clearly heard these words, ‘Work with those who are left behind. You were,’” she recalled. “And I had this vision of putting humpty dumpty back together again.”

With this vision in mind, Freeman sought out a collaborator. She approached Murphy, telling her, “‘I want to tell you about this idea I have and I’m looking for someone to help me put it together. So take your time thinking about it.’ And she took about three minutes and said ‘I’ll take this journey with you.’”

Consistency

Bereavement Massage Therapy uses a combination of established massage modalities—reflexology, hand-and-foot massage, Trager work, craniosacral techniques, polarity and more—to create groundedness, lightness of being and balance.

Using the same sequence of these modalities for each of the three sessions is a key component of Bereavement Massage Therapy.

“Usually, with massage therapy, pretty much every session is different,” Freeman said. “One time it might be to fix a shoulder, the next time it might be to just de-stress.

“Doing something in the same sequence, in the same way, was very different for me, but it gives a comfort zone for the person who’s already torn apart emotionally. They know what to expect and they find solace in routine,” she added.

Freeman also takes the client’s breathing into account.

“It’s easy to hold your breath for a long period of time when you’re anxious, or to breathe too fast,” Freeman said. “So we work the lung areas [via reflexology] on the feet and the hands, and the heart areas too, to bring those areas back into balance.”

Communication without Counseling

By venturing to help clients in such a tender emotional state, there is a danger of crossing the boundary between massage therapy and talk therapy. Freeman clarified that Bereavement Massage Therapy is not counseling.

“There is very little talking by the therapist in a Bereavement Massage Therapy session. It’s only to ensure that the client is comfortable,” she said.

Clients are always welcome to speak during a session, but clients who expect counseling should contact their care providers, such as hospice, a family physician, clergy, funeral director, or veterinarian, in the case of pet loss; or to find licensed mental health care providers or local support groups.

Freeman keeps business cards on hand to easily refer clients to mental health professionals.

Touch for the Spirit

LeCuona had just taken possession of her late husband’s ashes and was about to go into a Bereavement Massage Session.

“I thought to myself, ‘Where do I put [the] ashes?’ This was the first time I was in custody of him, leaving the car. I called Leslie and I said ‘Leslie, I have a problem.’ I asked, ‘If you don’t mind, can I take the ashes of my husband into the room?’

“She said ‘Of course.’ That means it was not only me, it was my husband. Leslie allowed me to do this. It was very important.”

LeCuona sums the experience up nicely. “[Bereavement Massage Therapy] is very emotional. You have to be very centered to do this. This type of massage is not for your body. It’s for your spirit … for me, I felt I was saved. It was my shelter.”

Freeman said nurturing touch is up there with life’s necessities.

“People have needs,” she said. “We need water, oxygen, food. And we need human touch.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!