What does death and dying mean to you personally? Has a person close to you died? Do you want to share your own experiences about quality of life or fears about dying? This website offers an incentive for health care professionals, individuals, and organizations to come together and open the channels of communication – the rights of the dying and the rights of the living – to advocate for individual rights.
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Posts by Suzanne Mitchell
Advanced Care Planning
Why is advanced care planning important. I want to be in charge ! I don’t want to be a burden on my family It helps me to realize there will be an end of this life It will take away a lot of the fear of the future and the “what ifs”… My family won’t have to make difficult decisions I don’t want people to suffer while their death is prolonged. These are just some of my thoughts. How about you?
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Quality of Life
Palliative Care is about Quality of Life which can take many forms. There is a Case Study in this website about a gentleman with Alzheimer’s Disease. His attendance at a Senior Day Program is a good example. He became able to communicate positive emotions and creative skills even though his disease process was very “terminal.” How…Maybe just through Unconditional Love ? (Left brain=intellectual and Right brain = intuitive?)
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Suicide…choice or crime.
Quality of Life can also go through change in the mind of a person. I once cared for a young Canadian woman who had attempted suicide after her fiance’ cheated on her. She had come to the United States because of a law. Once upon a time (I think around the 1970’s) if someone found a person who had attempted suicide in Canada and they took them to a hospital, they would then become financially responsible. This young woman sadly said, “If I didn’t die and someone found me, I didn’t want them to be responsible. So, I came here.”
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The Hospice Movement
“Although the Hospice Movement has sincerely brought some positive reinforcements, death and related words (such as terminally-ill) continue to hide in a dark and most often negative corner of the mind. Many professional colleagues as well as friends I’ve met along the way share in the belief that we need to better understand and accept this most profound experience.” By: Suzanne with Vital Comm Lines (visit the Phases of Death presented elsewhere in this Website)
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Safe Passage
What is meant by “Death As a Safe Passage?” It can be viewed in 3 Phases. Phase One – The Love Movement (“Using Death as an Adviser” – a quote from a Carlos Castaneda book.) Phase Two – Prolonged Suffering Versus Supportive Caring (“Whose Life Is It, Anyway?”) Phase Three – Relax, Breathe, and Let Go (“Deathing” or “The Art of Dying”) Please follow a more detailed description under Phases of Death.
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To Be Or Not To Be
The health care needs of those with chronic and serious life-threatening illnesses are definitely complexed. I also emphatically recognize that dying is the ultimate ending to life’s journey. It is sad to say that our health care system has come to acknowledge “the right to die” through the almighty dollar. Medicaid workers are now being instructed to “encourage” patients NOT to call 911 and hospitals are being penalized for too many ED visits from the chronically-ill. The light at the end of this “tunnel” (or more commonly called our continuum of care) is that quality of life care rather than
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Death is a reality
Certainly the violence and hatred we see and hear about that ends in a “killing” (death) follows a different venue. Even a violent death with its sorrow, resentment, and fears has its own set of lessons to be learned. And, looking at the immortality of humankind and gaining understanding about the end of life cannot be understated. You may say that this Website is in support of Death, Dying and our Quality of Living. Its name is https://vitalcommlines.com Anyway, check it out …..give your opinions, questions, suggestions.
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Cannabis – Safe Access
To coach patients and caregivers in safe, legitimate, integrative cannabinoid health care, as well as collect data related to the efficacy of cannabinoid medicine. To provide guidance accessing “batch-tested” medicinal cannabis products from the most trusted manufactors for the therapeutic use of symptom relief and pain management.
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Burning Van -A lesson in Loss
I moved to Escondido in April 1980 to work on my unfinished business and to learn about self-love. I attended a “Life, Death and Transition” workshop with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and an additional three weeks of “Intensive Growth Psychodrama” with Marti Barham. I want to share an experience I had one Sunday in October of that year. I was driving my recently purchased 1971 VW van to a convention where a friend and I would sell books and tapes and tell folks more about Elisabeth’s work. On the way, my engine caught fire and the whole van burnt into “junk” before
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