Companioning the Dying

07/26/2019

HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN SOMEONE SHOULD BE PUT ON HOSPICE?

Sadly, there are a lot of misconceptions about hospice care, so it might be helpful to clear a few of those out of the way first!

Choosing hospice for a loved one is NOT giving up on them, and it will NOT hasten their death.

Bottom line: Hospice care is for ANYONE who is at the end of their life, and who doesn’t wish to have further medical intervention to prevent death. That's it.

If someone tells you that hospice will speed up your loved one’s death, they are ill-informed. If someone is receiving hospice care, then yes, they are going to die. But when someone is already close to death, hospice care is no more likely to cause their death than medical intervention is likely to prevent it.

Sadly, a lot of life-saving and life-preserving measures are painful, invasive, and destroy the quality of life of the person undergoing them. They are often expensive and unnecessary in hind sight.

You also don't have to wait until your loved one is within a few days of death and the medical establishment has decided it's no longer reasonable to try to prevent death.

Hospice is an informed, compassionate choice to improve quality of life when it’s known that someone's death is imminent and expected -- but there isn't a time limit on that. It could be 6 weeks or 6 months.

When someone enters hospice, the focus of care shifts from life-preserving to life-affirming. Palliative measures can improve their comfort level. The point of hospice is to help a person feel better overall, and to create space for them to connect more intimately with the life and loved ones that are still here.

I personally know someone who has been on long-term hospice care at a nursing home for more than two years. He is still able to walk, drive, and care for himself in his late nineties! He continues to sign up for hospice care because they send him a very compassionate group of nurses and palliative specialists who check on his well-being and make recommendations for things like massage and music therapy. Who wouldn’t want massages or music therapy?!?!

And he’s still here -- two years after starting hospice care.

07/25/2019

WHAT DOES AN END OF LIFE DOULA ACTUALLY DO, ANYWAY?

This is a question that comes up regularly, so it seemed like great place to start a series of posts that go deeper into what I do and how it can help.

In fact, let's start here: our culture is woefully uninformed about death, the dying process, and what kinds of decisions need to be made when a loved one is at the end of their lives.

As a society, we’re not very good at being supportive of people who are dying, or of their family members as they make extremely difficult decisions on behalf of their loved ones. Families often find themselves taken completely off guard by a diagnosis or a loved one’s sudden or unexpected decline without the resources or information they need to make compassionate, timely decisions on their behalf.

Families can become quickly and startlingly overwhelmed when a loved one’s physical needs exceed what they are personally able to provide, or what can be reasonably provided through their current caregiving situation. When that happens, a doula can help the family identify what is needed, assist them in making a plan, connect them with further resources, and help coordinate caregivers and services on behalf of the family and dying person. In any end of life circumstance, a family can expect to be met with pragmatism and empathy by their doula, whose job is to support – not judge—their situation.

An End of Life Doula is well informed about the dying process itself and the decisions involved, and has resources for gathering further information or assistance in areas that they are less informed about. They are patient and emotionally supportive when tempers are short and people aren’t themselves because they are afraid, shocked or grieving. Doulas help identify what is needed on a dying person’s behalf, and can provide additional support and guidance that may be lacking in hospital or other medical care situations.

Doulas shape their practices based on their own personal strengths, interests, and capabilities, but the one thing they all have in common is that their contributions are always non-medical, and their focus is on improving the quality of life for the dying person and their family.

Let me know if you have any questions I can help answer.

06/26/2019

06/26/2019

06/26/2019