Dying
Patients, healthcare workers, and recently bereaved family members often describe a "good death" in terms of effective choices made in a few areas:
- Assurance of effective pain and symptom management.
- Education about death and its aftermath, especially as it relates to decision-making.
- Completion of any significant goals, such as resolving past conflicts.
People who are terminally ill may not always follow recognizable stages of grief. For example, a person who finds strength in denial may never reach a point of acceptance or accommodation and may react negatively to any statement that threatens this defense mechanism. Other people find comfort in arranging their financial and legal affairs or planning their funerals.
Read more about this topic: Terminal Illness
Famous quotes containing the word dying:
“A set of ideas, a point of view, a frame of reference is in space only an intersection, the state of affairs at some given moment in the consciousness of one man or many men, but in time it has evolving form, virtually organic extension. In time ideas can be thought of as sprouting, growing, maturing, bringing forth seed and dying like plants.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“In the dying world I come from quotation is a national vice. It used to be the classics, now it’s lyric verse.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)