Nursefriendly.com: Dealing With Death

Showing posts with label Dealing With Death. Show all posts

Sunday, March 20, 2011

How to Say Goodbye | Saying Goodbye to a Dying Loved One | Caring.com

Here, those who've been through the experience of saying good-bye share what felt right to them -- and what they wish they'd done differently.

Lesson #1: Don't wait until the last minute

It's hard to say good-bye, but putting off meaningful conversations is perhaps the number-one source of regret. Time and again, families ask Massachusetts hospice nurse Maggie Callanan to tell them exactly when the final hour is approaching, so that they can time their good-byes. This is dangerous, she says, because it's impossible to predict the final breath. "Dying people have the uncanny ability to choose the moment of death, and it's not uncommon for them to spare those they love the most or feel protective of by waiting until those people leave the room," says the author of Final Journeys: A Practical Guide for Bringing Care and Comfort at the End of Life, who has witnessed more than 2,000 deaths.

via caring.com

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Sunday, March 13, 2011

Anticipatory Grief | Alzheimer's, Dementia & the Stages of Grieving

By Paula Spencer, Caring.com senior editor

What is anticipatory grief?
Anticipatory grief is the emotional pain of losing a loved one, felt in advance of the person's death. It's a common phenomenon among those who care for the terminally ill.
It may be experienced at any time by any one connected to someone with Alzheimer's, but it's especially common at the middle and late stages of the disease.
Why Alzheimer's caregivers are vulnerable to anticipatory grief
Good-byes are always painful, and Alzheimer's is the ultimate "long good-bye." Anticipatory grief is rampant, and perhaps inevitable, among Alzheimer's caregivers because of the slow, progressive, and incurable nature of the disease. University of Indianapolis researchers asked more than 400 caregivers the open-ended question, "What would you say is the biggest barrier you have faced as a caregiver?" The majority -- more than 80 percent -- referred to the loss of the person they used to know.
The friends and family of someone with dementia experience two difficult psychological states at once:
Anticipatory grief, coping with the very real feelings of loss for someone who is still alive
Ambiguous loss, interacting with someone who's not fully present socially or psychologically

via caring.com

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Sunday, February 27, 2011

Dying is final, but passing on lives forever

by Greg Smith, MD
It is hard to believe that those we love will die.
We can’t bear it. It’s too harsh, too complicated, too fraught with emotional baggage and unfinished business and things never said. It’s too final. Dead is dead, after all. From the moment of our birth, we are dying. Death can be painful, tragic, too soon, too quick, too slow, too easy, or too hard.
So we soften it up a bit.
She is dying, the doctors tell us.
She is passing on, we tell ourselves.
Dying implies finality and the end of the road. We cannot cheat death.
Passing on implies going through, transitioning, skirting the physics and the metaphysics involved and coming out on the other side, changed somehow, better, calmer, whole. Keeping company with the better angels of our nature while shedding the demons like a skin.

via kevinmd.com

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Sunday, February 20, 2011

The care was futile, and the patient's wishes, KevinMD.com

by Jim deMaine, MD
“We have a patient on a ventilator here who is stable enough to transfer to your ICU, if that’s OK with you.”
This call, coming from the transfer coordinator, is emblematic of an insurance generated “medical care” coverage issue. I am salaried under the patient’s insurance carrier so the insurer wants this patient back under its wing as soon as possible.
The community hospital has been keeping Stella Norris (not her real name), an 89 year old woman, as long as possible. She is incapacitated from a massive stroke suffered five years ago. There is a feeding tube inserted through the stomach wall and she has needed total body care. 911 was called when she stopped breathing and she was taken to the closest hospital.

via kevinmd.com

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Saving Grace (Emergency Department Nurses)- LA Times Magazine

“I heard a guttural scream,” Rich says, “and a man was handing me his lifeless son.”

“How old?” I ask.

“Nine months. We worked on him for over an hour.”

Rich moves his chair, coughs. It’s freezing in the conference room. [Note: For privacy, nurses are mentioned only by first name.] The muffled din of the emergency room is audible through closed metal doors. It’s 7 a.m., and Rich’s 12-hour shift has just ended. “I flashed to something I heard once about how a casket doesn’t weigh very much—just enough to break a father’s heart,” he says, “and I lost it. I’m standing there, between beds one and two holding that dead baby, and I’m sobbing. I am in charge, and I’m crying.”

As an 11-year volunteer in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center’s emergency room, I’ve seen close up what ER nurses deal with. It takes rare emotional courage not to burn out when you know that every time those doors open—whether you are working triage in front, where a guy may stumble in with a heart attack, or in back, where paramedics may race in with a girl who has been knifed or shot—it’s bad news. Then there’s the physical strength required to survive 12-hour shifts with two half-hour breaks and 45 minutes for lunch. ER nurses never sit. But it’s the children—every ER nurse will tell you—who take the biggest toll

via latimesmagazine.com

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Sunday, March 20, 2011

How to Say Goodbye | Saying Goodbye to a Dying Loved One | Caring.com

Lesson #1: Don't wait until the last minute

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Anticipatory Grief | Alzheimer's, Dementia & the Stages of Grieving

By Paula Spencer, Caring.com senior editor

What is anticipatory grief?

Why Alzheimer's caregivers are vulnerable to anticipatory grief

Sunday, February 27, 2011

Dying is final, but passing on lives forever

Sunday, February 20, 2011

The care was futile, and the patient's wishes, KevinMD.com

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Saving Grace (Emergency Department Nurses)- LA Times Magazine

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