Category: The Dying Process

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The Painful Choices End-of-Life Brings for the Caregiver

by Kay Bransford

Caught off guard

[T]he final days for both my mom and dad were unexpected. When we got their initial diagnoses in 2012 — Alzheimer’s for dad and vascular dementia for mom — we were told they could live for a decade or more.

Early on, I fought to be their caregiver. Due to the nature of their conditions, they just didn’t recognize how many issues they had managing their day-to-day lives. Eventually, they accepted my help. I adapted to being the primary adult family caregiver and absorbed the additional responsibility to advocate for their needs.

I wasn’t prepared for how hard it would be to make decisions about life and death for my parents. Thankfully, I was very clear on their wishes. I spent most of my adult life living near my parents and visited them two or three times a week. On many occasions, as my parents were watching or caring for their own parents, they would comment on how they would like to be treated.

Over the years, my mom must’ve told me at least a hundred times that “If I end up like my mom, put a pillow over my head.” Obviously, I couldn’t do that, but it reinforced the fact that she wanted quality of life, not just life. My dad wasn’t as conversational about his wishes, but when he would share what was happening to colleagues and friends, we would discuss how our family might face the same situations. In those moments, I also learned what was important to him.

In 2013, after my parents moved into an assisted living community, life and caregiving became much easier, at least for a while. The biggest issue was handling the multitude of calls to come visit. Sadly, my parents never remembered when I visited. They would often call me while I was on the car ride home to ask when I was stopping by.

What’s wrong with dad?

In the spring of 2013, I noticed that my dad was starting to drool, and on some visits, his speech was a little garbled. The staff doctor at the assisted living community didn’t find anything unusual and felt that this was likely related to the Alzheimer’s. I wanted to be sure, so I set up an appointment with a specialist.

The specialist didn’t find anything out of the norm. My parents had dentist appointments coming up, so we decided to wait and see whether the dentist noticed anything unusual.

Unfortunately, the appointments my parents had with the visiting dentist came and went. When it came time to see the dentist, they’d both declined to be seen. They were put back on the dentist’s wait list, but I didn’t want to go that long without conclusive information about dad’s symptoms.

Instead of waiting for the dentist’s appraisal, I requested a swallow consult with the community’s speech pathologist for dad. I was surprised to learn that my dad’s tongue seemed to be paralyzed. My dad was immediately referred to the doctor at the assisted living community. The community doctor found a growth on the back of dad’s tongue and suggested that we see a specialist for mouth cancers right away.

Within a few days, the specialist confirmed that dad had a tumor. The tumor tethered his tongue, which prevented him from being able to move it to swallow or speak clearly. We learned that dad had options for treatment, but they would be extensive: chemotherapy, radiation, and a feeding tube. Thankfully, one of my brothers was able to come to town and help me figure out how to best help our dad.

Deciding what comes next

Two months before the doctor diagnosed dad’s tumor, our parents celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary. As their children, we were proud that we could keep them together as they were both living with similar stages of different types of dementia. There aren’t many options for couples who both need memory care.

Although they were together throughout dad’s new diagnosis, we knew that our mom didn’t understand what dad was facing. What we did know was that they were better as a pair, and we wanted to see if we could get them more time together. We were raised to put up a fight for the things we wanted, and we were prepared to go into battle for dad.

Getting his teeth cleaned by a specialist was the first step in getting treatment for his tumor. In order to get his teeth cleaned, he had to get cleared by a cardiologist for the procedure. This is because they would have to sedate him during the teeth cleaning.

It wasn’t until this meeting with the cardiologist that we realized just how weak he was. During the appointment, dad fell asleep on the examination table, something he would do during the many appointments to come.

We realized that if we moved forward with treatment for the tumor, it would create even more discomfort for our dad. Due to the nature of his dementia, he was already experiencing discomfort in his daily life. It seemed senseless to add yet another layer of suffering when recovery from the tumor wasn’t guaranteed.

We understood that it was time to meet with the hospice doctor to discuss palliative care and make dad as comfortable as we could for the rest of his life. Still, it was hard for us to absorb the reality that our father, a multiwar veteran, was going to die from a cancerous tumor on his tongue.

Dad’s tumor was diagnosed on August 27, 2013, and on September 27, 2013, he passed away in a hospice center. I’m thankful it was swift, but it happened so fast that I was thoroughly in shock, as were we all. Once we realized how much pain he was in, we were happy that he didn’t linger.

For whatever reason, my mom, siblings, and I decided we wanted one last family picture of us surrounding dad’s body. I’ve never seen 5 people look so forlorn in any photograph before or since.

Living with the loss

The coming days, weeks, and months were incredibly difficult to manage. Not only was I grieving for my dad, I was second-guessing my ability to be the family caregiver. I was also trying to figure out how to help my mom who, due to her dementia, couldn’t remember that her husband died.

I am now thankful that we took a picture with dad in his hospice bed — it turned out to be something I could share with my mom. Although many people will tell you to never remind someone with dementia about the loss of a loved one, I felt that it would be more harmful not to tell her.

My mom would spend her time roaming around the community looking for dad and grew increasingly anxious when she couldn’t find him. I wanted her to be able to grieve his loss. When I visited, I would bring pictures of dad, share a happy story about him with mom, and mention how much I missed him.

During the first month after dad’s death, mom became very combative with the other residents; before long, she was getting into physical fights with other people in the community. This was a new behavior for her, and it was unlike my mom to be physical.

I was called in to meet with the community’s director who told me we needed to find a way to help my mom manage better in the community or she would have to move out. They suggested we hire a personal care assistant (PCA) to help her manage her day. We realized that it was time to start looking into a community specifically for people who need memory care.

Helping mom adjust

We immediately hired a PCA after meeting with the community’s director. Due to her dementia, mom already had some issues with paranoia. Unfortunately, bringing a PCA in only made mom more paranoid. She felt like someone she didn’t know was constantly following her.

Mom was generally suspicious of suggestions from someone she didn’t know well. This meant that she had a hard time connecting with most of the residents and staff in her community. Without dad, she was truly alone much of the day.

I also hired an aging life care manager to help me find the best memory care community for mom. She helped me understand and recognize the key attributes of a good memory care community.

We needed a community with:

  • scheduled activities that my mom would enjoy
  • active reminders about upcoming activities or events so my mom wouldn’t miss out
  • a standardized menu so that mom didn’t have to figure out how to piece together a menu of her own
  • community cues to help mom recognize how to get to her apartment

Assisted living communities are designed to help people navigate physical limitations in order to complete daily functions and activities. They don’t offer activities designed for people with memory issues, and they aren’t staffed to deal with the types of behavior, like paranoia, that might present in someone with dementia.

Before we could finalize the details of mom’s move, she had a major setback. She had been complaining about back pain, so her doctor prescribed her Tramadol. Mom ended up on bedrest and behaved as if she were on hallucinogenic drugs.

We later found out that the medication caused this reaction because of the type of dementia that she had. Her doctor said that this wasn’t uncommon, but it wasn’t something we were prepared for. The possibility of such a reaction was never mentioned to me when she was receiving her prescription.

It took nearly 3 weeks for the drug to work its way out of her system. She spent so much time in bed recovering that she became weak and unsteady. Several months passed before she was able to walk on her own again.

Once mom was stable, we moved her into a memory care community. We moved her on January 17, 2015. We knew the transition would be difficult. Often, for people with dementia, switching residences can result in a recognizable decline. Although she adapted quite well, she had a fall that landed her in the emergency room after only a few months in the new community.

She was unable to fully recover from the fall and could no longer walk unassisted. To make matters worse, mom would never remember she wasn’t steady on her feet. She would try to get up and go whenever the notion struck her. To keep her safe, we brought a new PCA back on staff.

Mom lived in the memory care community for nearly a year. We were lucky to have found a PCA that doted on mom and that mom trusted. She would do mom’s hair and nails and made sure she was active and engaged in activities. It was nice to have someone I could contact to know how mom was doing on a daily basis.

Saying goodbye to mom

In December 2015, mom tipped over while washing her hands. She never hit the ground, but she complained of hip pain, so she was taken to the ER. When I arrived, I immediately recognized the significance of her injury.

Sometimes, when bones grow frail, a simple twist is all it takes to break a hip. While they took mom to X-ray, I found a private restroom and sobbed. I knew that elderly women who break a hip are at an increased risk of dying within a year of the incident.

When I met with the orthopedic surgeon, she confirmed that mom’s hip was broken. She told me that she couldn’t operate until I lifted mom’s Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order. I was taken aback by the surgeon’s request.

When I asked her why, she said that they’d have to put in a breathing tube. I told her that if my mom died on the table she wouldn’t want to be brought back to a life with dementia. The surgeon repeated that to make mom comfortable, we should operate, and to do that, I needed to lift the DNR order.

I called the aging life care manager back in and a geriatric doctor to help me navigate my choices for mom. The geriatric doctor told me that mom most likely wouldn’t be strong enough to qualify for surgery. A few tests had to be run before we even needed to worry about the surgeon’s request.

The first test identified a heart and lung issue, eliminating the option for surgery. Mom’s body just wasn’t strong enough, and it was easy to see how much pain she was in.

She was alert even after four courses of morphine. She didn’t really understand what was going on. And at some point during her stay at the ER, she had a small stroke. My mom no longer recognized me, and she was unable to remember that she had children.

It had become clear that our only choice was to move mom into hospice care. Her health was fading fast, and we wanted to make her last days as comfortable as possible. We moved mom back to her community where she had 24-hour support and hospice care. I called all of my siblings and they scheduled one last trip to see mom.

Over the next week, mom mostly slept. Every day, I’d arrive with lotion and rub her feet. By the end of each visit, I would end up crying at the foot of her bed. I told her how much I would miss her, but reminded her that dad was patiently waiting for her to join him.

When I visited her on Christmas Day, her breathing was jagged. I knew she didn’t have much longer. The memory community nurse called at 5:35 p.m. to report that mom had passed away. Even though I felt it coming, I was still stunned. Thankfully, my husband and children were with me when I received the news. They were able to take me to see mom one last time and say my goodbye.

Learning to live with my decisions

If I knew how things were going to progress, I feel like I would have made many different decisions throughout my caregiving journey. It’s hard not to second-guess the decisions that I made during my time as caregiver.

A wonderful social worker told me that I should forgive myself, because I made the best decisions that I could with the information I had at the time. I’m still reminding myself of that. I often share this advice with other caregivers who feel the same remorse about their caregiving journey.

A year has passed, and I’m still learning how to adjust to life after caregiving. I was told quite often to be kind to myself during my journey. Now that my family caregiving journey is over, I believe that this is the best advice I was ever given. I hope that after reading about my experiences, you can take this to heart and find peace on your journey.

Life after caregiving

While I was caring for my parents, I started to build a part-time business focused on helping other caregivers. I wanted to help other caregivers navigate challenges like the ones I was facing — managing doctor’s appointments, getting finances in order, and maintaining a second home.

This part-time business would become MemoryBanc. For several years, I balanced work by limiting the number of clients I helped so that my parents would always be the priority. When I was grieving my mom’s passing, I realized how much I enjoyed being able to help her lead the life she wanted.

After a few months, I started to take on more clients. It felt good to be able to put my caregiving journey behind me, but also to use what I learned to make me a valuable resource for so many other families. While I still have moments of sadness, I’ve been able to focus on the great lives my parents lived instead of dwelling on the last few years we had together. I’m still adjusting to my new normal.

Complete Article HERE!

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The Brutal Truth Of Living With A Terminal Illness


Brought to you by Stop The Horror
Stop The Horror is a five-minute short film that confronts viewers with a harrowing retelling of the true events surrounding one man’s traumatic death.

by Sam Langford 

Kass Hall is a law student with a background in art and design; she lives with her husband and their pug called Elvis. She describes herself as a sister, a daughter, an aunty and a friend. 

She has been living with cancer for 27 years.

“I’m getting good at defying the odds, but I’ll never be in remission,” Kass says. “I’ll always be under my oncologist and surgeon’s eagle eyes, and I know that each hurdle, big or small, is a hurdle closer to the finish line.”

Impending death is not the kind of thing you adjust to. Despite the number of times she’s come close, Kass, now 39, is frank about being scared. She is under no illusions about what dying is like — she has seen “many, many friends, from children to older people, dying slowly and painfully.”

“I’ve been in the room in the final moments of life, and though we do our best to make people ‘comfortable’, it’s a situation I do not want to find myself in — for my own sake and that of those who love me,” she says.

She hopes that finish line isn’t soon. But in the event that it is, she wants a say in drawing that line.

This is how Kass has come to be an advocate for voluntary assisted dying legislation — her experience leaves her pretty uniquely placed to clap back at people opposed to it. With new assisted dying legislation proposed in Victoria at the moment, now is a particularly pressing time to persuade people of the bill’s importance.

“I have always liked the idea that, when I reach ‘my line’, I could choose to end my own pain. Watching someone you love die is one of the worst experiences a human can endure, and I imagine being the person dying is even worse.”

It’s an experience explored in the recently released film, Stop The Horror. A graphic five-minute short directed by Justin Kurzel, the film tells the true story of a man who dies over a period of three weeks, exploring what he and his family are forced to deal with.

Getting Diagnosed

Kass’s first diagnosis was in 1990, when she was twelve. The kind of cancer she has is incredibly rare, and was hard to pin down for a long time — as she wryly puts it, “what they thought it was then is not what they think it is now”.

That first diagnosis led to surgery and chemotherapy. On five separate occasions, her parents were called to the hospital to say goodbye. And yet, against all odds, Kass survived, though not without complications. “At that time I lost part of my stomach and duodenum [the first section of the small intestine],” she says. “The chemo left me infertile and with a heart condition, though thankfully my heart has remained strong.”

These complications have been multiplying steadily ever since. In 2000, Kass lost a kidney. In 2008, her thyroid. In 2011, the cancer returned to her stomach and liver. It was only in 2012 that her doctors discovered she had a genetic defect that was causing the tumours to return.

That was the moment, Kass says, when realisation hit. “This disease was — barring the unforeseen — what would kill me”.

Here’s the cruel thing about this genetic defect: in addition to all but guaranteeing the cancer’s return, it makes Kass ineligible for an organ transplant. And while so far it’s been possible to combat the resurgence of tumours with surgery, she’s keenly aware that things can’t continue this way forever.

“There’s going to come a time where surgery is no longer an option, and that’s when I start the slow process of dying.”

“The idea of dying anytime soon is not one I am comfortable with,” she says, “but who is, though?” She’s coming up on her 40th birthday in January, a milestone her oncologist has been telling her for years would be a “great outcome”.

Why Voluntary Assisted Dying Legislation Matters

Assisted dying has always been controversial, often for reasons Kass is keen to see us move past. Concerns about younger people — not children, but adults in their late teens and early twenties — having access to the option of assisted dying are, to Kass’s mind, utterly dismissive of terminally ill young people’s experience.

“There is no difference in older people and younger people making this decision,” she says. “If anything, for younger people the decision is harder because we think about what we may miss out on — weddings, children, travel.”

Kass says arguments that say young people with terminal illness don’t have the necessary perspective or clarity to decide to end their lives “seek to debase a person’s autonomy and thought process.”

“It’s designed to second guess a person. No one has the right to do that. Anyone who said that to me would probably not like the response they get from me.”

As for those who argue that choosing to die is a selfish act, Kass says her response “probably isn’t fit to print”.

“What I can say is that what other people think is not my problem. They are not living my life, they’re not walking in my shoes. Everyone has an opinion, but my life deals in facts. What others think about my choices, especially if they’ve never experienced my situation, is of zero consequence to me”.

Some of the most legitimate and important critiques of voluntary assisted dying legislation, though, come from people who have experienced Kass’s situation, or situations like it. These campaigns are run by people with terminal illness or life-threatening disabilities who are concerned that assisted dying legislation will needlessly kill many people through a subtle combination of pressures. Things like, for example, the feeling of being a burden on close family or medical services.

These are arguments Kass is willing to engage on — she says she’s aware of and understands the campaign in question, but thinks the legislation proposed by the Victorian Government includes adequate safeguards, including a multi-step process she hopes will catch any instance of family or external pressure.

“To my mind,” she says, “that is why patient autonomy is the key. At the end of the day, what family members think and what their needs are is not what this is about — it is and should always be about the primary patient. If the primary patient has not requested and been through the voluntary assisted dying process, then it shouldn’t be available.”

“And any family member that puts any pressure on a person who is dealing with illness or disability should find the map to hell and go there. There are so many people in the disability community and those with long term illness who have so much to contribute and who are outstanding members of society. Having an illness or disability doesn’t diminish us as people.”

Reaching The Finish Line

In Kass’s case, she knows her husband will support her decision if she reaches her line. She hopes that won’t be soon — she wants to grow old with her husband, see her nieces and nephews grow up, have a full legal career. For the time being, she’s optimistic.

But even on good days, the line is there, and Kass says that when she hits it, she has “no hesitations” about what she’ll do.

“I have no interest in suffering unnecessarily,” she says. “It will be my decision.”

“I respect that this won’t be for everyone. I just feel that a choice for those of us who do seek to end our own suffering should be given to us. We all have our own paths in life, and should have as much choice made available to us as possible.”

Complete Article HERE!

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Why teens need to understand care plans for dying parents

By Lisa Rapaport

[W]hen children lose a parent during adolescence, their mental health as young adults may depend on how comfortable they were with the treatment and support provided at the end of their parents’ lives, a recent study suggests.

To understand the lasting psychological impact of the death of a parent during adolescence, researchers surveyed young adults who had lost a parent to cancer six to nine years earlier, when they were 13 to 16 years old.

Overall, 105 of the 593 young adults (18%) said they had little or no trust in the care provided during the final week of the parent’s life.

Compared to the participants who were satisfied with the final week of care, those who were unhappy were more than twice as likely to suffer from mental health issues like depression, anxiety and eating disorders, researchers report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, online August 8.

“We already knew that children who have lost a parent are at risk for long-term psychological challenges including depression, risk of suicide, and risk of self-injury,” said Dr. Jennifer Mack, a researcher at Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center.

“However, a link to trust in the medical providers of the parent was not previously understood,” Mack, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email. “This is important because it offers a potential path forward to greater resilience and healing after a parent’s death for young people who experience this type of profound loss.”

The current study focuses not on how teens felt when their parent was dying, or immediately afterwards, noted lead study author Kim Beernaert of the End-of-Life Research Group at Vrije University Brussels and Ghent University.

Instead, it looks at how they feel after several years have passed, Beernaert said by email.

Young people who had little or no trust in the care parents received at the end of life were at least twice as likely to report still feeling bitter toward health providers for failing to make the correct initial diagnosis, stopping or never starting treatment, or not doing everything possible for the parent, the study found.

The mistrustful young adults were also more likely to still want more information about the parent’s disease, treatment decisions, and death.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how teens’ experiences during a dying parents’ final days influence mental health later in life.

Another limitation is the potential for factors not examined in the study to impact mental health for these young adults, as well as the potential for teens with psychological problems to be less trustful of medical providers than adolescents without mental health issues, the researchers note.

Still, the results highlight the importance of providing age-appropriate support and grief counseling to children and teens during a parents’ final weeks or months of life, said Dr. Amos Bailey, a palliative care researcher at University of Colorado Medicine in Aurora.

Resources tailored to young people are often lacking outside pediatric hospitals, Bailey, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

“What is at stake for bereaved families is the potential for lifelong mental health problems that are probably more socially significant for a teenager (who) will live with this grief for 60 or more years as opposed to a widow who may outlive her husband by 3-5 years,” Bailey said.

Complete Article HERE!

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The Gentler Symptoms of Dying

By SARA MANNING PESKIN, M.D.

The patient’s hair was styled with curls so stiff, they held her head a few inches up from her hospital pillow. She had painted her lips a shade of bright pink that exuded the confidence of age.

Just after her colon burst, she was still awake. She looked around, at me, at the monitors. She asked for pain medication. “Am I dying?” she asked.

“We think so,” I said, touching her manicured fingernails. “I am here with you.”

Later, she kept her eyes closed but opened them when we talked. It was a state that the author and hospice nurse Barbara Karnes described as “one foot in each world.”

“Can I do anything?” I asked.

“No, honey. I’m just tired.” She closed her eyes again.

Still later, she lapsed into a stupor. It was as if I wasn’t in the room at all, as if she’d gotten so close to death that she could no longer see the living world. With each hour, her lipstick appeared brighter as if in defiance as her blood pressure dropped and her skin whitened. Midmorning, she died.

While some of the symptoms of dying, like the death rattle, air hunger and terminal agitation, can cause alarm in witnesses, other symptoms are more gentle.

The human body’s most compassionate gift is the interdependence of its parts. As organs in the torso fail, the brain likewise shuts down. With the exception of the minority of people who suffer sudden death, the vast majority of us experience a slumberous slippage from life. We may be able to sense people at the bedside on a spiritual level, but we are not fully awake in the moments, and often hours, before we die.

Every major organ in the body — heart, lungs, liver, kidneys — has the capacity to shut off the brain. It’s a biological veto system.

When the heart stops pumping, blood pressure drops throughout the body. Like electricity on a city block, service goes out everywhere, including the brain.

When the liver or kidneys fail, toxic electrolytes and metabolites build up in the body and cloud awareness.

Failing lungs decrease oxygen and increase carbon dioxide in the blood, both of which slow cognitive function.

The mysterious exception is “terminal lucidity,” a term coined by the biologist Michael Nahm in 2009 to describe the brief state of clarity and energy that sometimes precedes death. Alexander Batthyány, another contemporary expert on dying, calls it “the light before the end of the tunnel.”

A 5-year-old boy in a coma for three weeks suddenly regains consciousness. He thanks his family for letting him go and tells them he’ll be dying soon. The next day, he does.

A 26-year-old woman with severe mental disabilities hasn’t spoken a word for years. Suddenly, she sings, “Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!” The year is 1922. She sings for half an hour and then she passes away. The episode is witnessed by two prominent physicians and later recounted by them separately, at least five times, with identical descriptions.

Early reports of terminal lucidity date back to Hippocrates, Plutarch and Galen. Dr. Nahm collected 83 accounts of terminal lucidity written over 250 years, most of which were witnessed by medical professionals. Nearly 90 percent of cases happened within a week of death and almost half occurred on the final day of life.

Terminal lucidity occurred irrespective of ailment, in patients with tumors, strokes, dementia and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Nahm suggested the mechanism of terminal lucidity may differ from one disease to another. For example, severe weight loss in patients with brain tumors could cause the brain to shrink, yielding fleeting relief of pressure on the brain that might allow for clearer thinking. Yet this theory doesn’t explain terminal lucidity in people dying from dementia, kidney failure or other diseases. Like death itself, terminal lucidity retains a screen of mystery.

My grandfather talked to us for 10 minutes the day before he died. He hadn’t spoken coherently in days. His hands had become baby-like, grasping our fingers or the bed railing reflexively. The weight of his eyelids had become too heavy to lift.

Suddenly, he was back. “What’s the good word?” he asked, as if that day was the same as all the days before. He marched down the line of grandchildren at his bedside, asking for the latest news in our lives. He asked if they ever finished building the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem. He made a joke, one I can’t remember except for the way he smiled out of the right side of his mouth, tilted his head from side to side, and held up his hands in jest.

And then, again, he was gone.

Complete Article HERE!