Quotes About End-of-life

Dying doesn't cause suffering. Resistance to dying does.

Even at the very end of life, healing a relationship can transform the history of a family. A relationship that is complete need not end; in this context, complete means there is nothing left unsaid or undone. When a dying person and a loved one come to feel complete between themselves, time together tends to be as full of joy and loving affection as sadness.

TAKING THE LONG VIEW, we are still a young civilization and our culture is a work in progress. In our policies, programs, and plans for caring for people through the end of life, we have been acting childishly: ignoring basic responsibilities, indulging in magical thinking (If we ignore it, maybe it will go away), and fighting without regard to the consequences.

she had a life-threatening illness and was too ill to speak for herself, she did not want any invasive measures to prolong her life: no surgery, no CPR, no mechanical ventilation, no artificial nutrition and hydration.

Como sociedad necesitamos encontrar la forma de hacernos cargo de los ancianos y de ayudarlos a morir si así lo desean.

La muerte con dignidad es un derecho humano, pero la ley y el establecimiento médico a menudo nos obligan a vivir más allá de la dignidad.

Shortly after her feeding tube is removed, Terri Schiavo receives the Catholic ceremony of last rites. Michael Schiavo stays in a room down the hall. He remains at his wife's side throughout the day, except when her immediate family comes to see Terri.

People make these comments all the time. They talk about this with their loved ones every day. People's feedings - tube feedings - are stopped across this country every day.

If last words are to be audible and coherent, they need to be delivered before you have any tubes up your nose or down your throat. Otherwise, the nurse gets the last word when she says, 'Don't try to talk, honey.'

We should at least make sure that patients are given the opportunity to opt out of spending their final days in a hospital, hooked up to tubes and running up enormous bills.

The end of life is likely to be an important focus for innovation. Most people die in hospitals, tied up with tubes and with their bodies pumped full of drugs. Yet most would rather die at home and with more control over the timing and manner of their death.

Three-quarters of people say they want to die at home, but only a quarter of people actually do.

I think it's very interesting that [doctors] privilege the self that is saying, "I don't want to die," but want to discount the self that said, "I want to allow natural death in such a situation."

Marie de Hennezel, a French psychologist who works with the terminally ill, believes that "the person who can say to someone else 'I am going to die' does not become the victim of death but, rather, the protagonist in his or her own dying.

essay on the language of the dying

I want some colleague to be free to come help me when I say the time has come. That's what I'm fighting for, me. Now that sounds selfish. And if it helps somebody else, so be it.

You learn working in hospice that a person can, in fact, live too long.

It is the duty of a doctor to prolong life and it is not his duty to prolong the act of dying.

A lot of money is spent trying to keep people alive who don't necessarily want to be alive.

Why should anyone - the state, the medical profession, or anyone else - presume to tell someone else how much suffering they must endure as their life is ending?

Unless they've had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.

no matter which end-of-life decisions were made, there are always regrets, there is always that guilt — live parts of me holding onto memories of a dying you dead parts of me holding onto living memories of you

Every state in America has an end of life directive or durable power of attorney provision. For the peace of mind of your children and your spouse as well as the comfort of knowing the government won't make these decisions, it's a very popular thing. Just not everybody's aware of it.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.