“Having a sense of the possibilities in advance is essential to minimize surprises, make specific requests for end-of-life symptom management, and decide the possible paths available to you.”
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“Your mother didn’t choose a terminal illness. She only chose not to let the disease pick when and how she would die.”
“We live in a culture that’s intensely driven by productivity, accomplishments, and academic achievements. In doing this, we’ve forgotten about our wise ones, the storytellers, the original wisdom keepers, the Elders.”
“What is fundamentally the difference between a doctor pulling a plug on a machine that provides lifesaving nutrients to a person that could potentially stay ‘alive’ on it for years, and a doctor prescribing pills to a person with mere days or months to live to end their unnecessary suffering?”
“I was reluctant to force the issue. What remained unsaid came with its own set of consequences.”
“‘Don’t let the patient die’… is that the right thing or the wrong thing for a given patient? It is time for physicians to think that through more completely and allow, perhaps, a different answer.”
“No one is born into this world alone, and in the best of circumstances, no one dies alone. With people living longer than ever before, however, outliving family and friends is a modern-day reality.”
“The sentence that sent my blood pressure skyward was this: ‘Even if my patients are beyond pain, there is also a cost to those who are forced to perform emergency efforts that is just that: a performance.’”
Death. Mortality. End of Life. Something inevitable, yet rarely discussed and a source of intense discomfort for most. When mentioned, it is considered inauspicious and rude in many cultures. Death is an integral part of the workday for a Critical Care Physician like me. But it was never a topic of discussion in Medical School or training.
Although many individuals shy away from contemplating the inevitability of death, most would agree that they would like to die well. A new review of existing literature, published in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, asks what makes a “good death” according to those involved in the process.
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