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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Archives for Recent Posts
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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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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Opinion: Aid-In-Dying option
The essence of this conversation is on the debate surrounding the term “Physician-Assisted Suicide.” Most health professional agree that this term (that we’ll call PAS) applies only to patients that are diagnosed as terminally-ill. The debate arises in the ethics or moral implications. My understanding (as in a PBS series I watched) of the Oregon Law supporting PAS is simply about a prescription consisting of enough sedative-type medication to stop respirations much like a “deep” sleep. Of course, there is much involved regarding counseling and hospice management prior to this discussion and making a decision. For more information, you can
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