By BJ Miller, Shoshana Berger — 2019
Prognoses are more of an art than a science. Maybe it’s better not to know.
Read on www.nytimes.com
CLEAR ALL
Death is a part of life, and so are the funerals and memorial services held to mark an individual’s passing. But when we’re called upon to speak at these occasions, many of us are at a loss for words.
Palliative care specialist BJ Miller and Shoshana Berger explain how to bring more meaning and less suffering to the end of life.
This year has awakened us to the fact that we die. We’ve always known it to be true in a technical sense, but a pandemic demands that we internalize this understanding. It’s one thing to acknowledge the deaths of others, and another to accept our own.
Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the psychiatrist whose pioneering work with terminally ill patients helped to revolutionize attitudes toward the care of the dying, died Tuesday at her home in Scottsdale, Ariz. She was 78.
Kamilah Majied shares her advice for staying afloat when you feel like you’re drowning.
It is extremely difficult for anyone, especially young people in their 20s and 30s, to be told that their treatment(s) haven’t worked. If the cancer you have continues to progress despite treatment, it may be called end-stage cancer.
A few months and many deaths ago, I woke up exhausted, again. Every morning, I felt like I was rebuilding myself from the ground up. Waking up was hard. Getting to my desk to write was hard. Taking care of my body was hard. Remembering the point of it all was hard.
The time between diagnosis and death presents an opportunity for “extraordinary growth.”
This is written for the person with advanced cancer, but it can be helpful to the people who care for, love, and support this person, too.
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When I got sick, I warned my friends: Don’t try to make me stop thinking about death.