By Charles Garfield — 2017
Compassion is anything but abstract. It can be taught and practiced.
Read on www.latimes.com
CLEAR ALL
With each diagnosis, knowing her life hung in the balance, she was “stunned, then anguished” and astonished by “how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health.”
Studies of dying patients who seek a hastened death have shown that their reasons often go beyond physical ones like intractable pain or emotional ones like feeling hopeless.
My Feb. 5 column, “A Heartfelt Appeal for a Graceful Exit,” prompted a deluge of information and requests for information on how people too sick to reap meaningful pleasure from life might be able to control their death.
I've written this piece partly because I hope it will make those of us with health difficulties feel less alone and partly because I hope it will help others understand how to communicate with us better. With that in mind, I hope you'll find it helpful.
A calm mind and even temper can help make peace with life’s difficulties.
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I’ve been disabled and intensely ill with the degenerative neuro-immuno illness myalgic encephalomyelitis (formerly known by the misnomer “chronic fatigue syndrome”) for 30 years.