SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS Official Trailer (2018) Elizabeth Olsen Movie HD

Does the Soul Return to the Universe?

One of my favorite ideas about the afterlife is the transcendental oversoul, Emerson's idea that life is a brief interruption of being separate until we return to the consciousness that envelops and connects us all.

Wonderneed has an article exploring this idea from the perspective of science.  "Orchestrated objective reduction" is the theory that the quantum elements that make up our consciousness continue even after death.

Palliative Care is Medical Care, Too

When Senator McCain's family announced that he was no longer going to treat his cancer, some reporters said he was stopping medical care. But others understood that palliative care is medical care, too.  Isaac Chan wrote in the Washington Post about the difficult but vitally important conversations with dying patients.

Many physicians encourage early palliative care for terminally ill patients, to make the process of dying less painful, more cost-effective and patient-focused. But if the patients are not ready, instead of feeling relief, they may experience this advice as abandonment. Without first considering how patients understand their own condition, doctors risk returning to a culture of paternalistic medicine, one where physicians make decisions for the patient in the belief that they know best. Disagreements about treatments between doctors and their patients near the end of life can be devastating. So communication is vital.

HELPING A FRIEND THROUGH GRIEF

How do you help a grieving friend?

Dealing with Death: Hospice Workers on Easing the Passing at End of Life

Providing the possibility of that wished-for death is the professional mission of all in this room, of all the 935 employees and 3,000 volunteers who work for the 40-year-old nonprofit Hospice of the Western Reserve. Each day they serve 1,200 hospice patients, most of them in hospitals, nursing homes, or their homes, and as many as 88 in one of three inpatient hospice houses in the Cleveland area, like this one off Lakeshore Boulevard.

By Medicare’s criteria, to receive hospice services, each of those patients is deemed to have six months or less to live. In most cases, they also must agree to forgo curative treatments....“It’s sacred work,” says Lisa Scotese Gallagher, one of whose jobs at Western Reserve is to provide programming to help the staff deal with the stress and emotional intensity of their jobs. “But the expectation that we can be immersed in suffering and loss and not be touched by it is unrealistic.”

...“Most of death isn’t medical, it’s spiritual and psychological,” he says. Hospice workers know they can’t erase all hurts and resentments. But often they facilitate conversations that can lead to deathbed reconciliations.

Crazy Good Turns: Thoughts on Grief

I love the Crazy Good Turns podcast, a "celebration of good," with stories about the good people do for others. This episode is about Camp Hope, a place for grieving children. Camp Hope counselors, like the campers, all dealt with loss at an early age.

A Veterinarian Wants The Same Relief He Provides for Pets

Catherine Ashe writes in Slate:

And as we do it, we hold the hands of distraught owners and help them make that last painful decision. We offer words of comfort and listen to sacred stories. And we meet each pet’s eyes in those last moments, and what we see again and again is not fear but relief. Relaxation. The end of suffering has come at last. I have seen it firsthand, time and time again. The wordless thank you, as a beloved pet slips into whatever awaits us in the next life. The light dims and then is extinguished. As animal physicians, we are not afraid to acknowledge that death comes for us all and that we possess the ability to ease its final agonies.

As veterinarians, we do what human doctors are not allowed to do. We all know that humans cannot win against death, not forever. Sometimes, when patients approach the end, doctors can offer a salve, buy time. But for many, there comes a time when the salve no longer soothes and doctors can do nothing but harm. And yet, in most states, there is nothing to offer in this moment. Doctors’ hands are tied. They can try to make their patients comfortable, but they cannot help them through that final door. They must go alone.

A Gentler Death -- Palliative Sedation

The Washington Post reports on the grey area of palliative sedation that can relieve suffering and hasten death.

Under palliative sedation, a doctor gives a terminally ill patient enough sedatives to induce unconsciousness. The goal is to reduce or eliminate suffering, but in many cases the patient dies without regaining consciousness....While aid-in-dying, or “death with dignity,” is legal in seven states and the District [of Columbia], medically assisted suicide retains tough opposition. Palliative sedation, though, has been administered since the hospice care movement began in the 1960s and is legal everywhere....

Because there are no laws barring palliative sedation, the dilemma facing doctors who use it is moral rather than legal, said Timothy Quill, who teaches psychiatry, bioethics and palliative-care medicine at the University of Rochester Medical Center in New York.

Some doctors are hesitant about using it “because it brings them right up to the edge of euthanasia,” Quill said.

But Quill believes that any doctor who treats terminally ill patients has an obligation to consider palliative sedation. “If you are going to practice palliative care, you have to practice some sedation because of the overwhelming physical suffering of some patients under your charge.”