Word: deathly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...sentence. A difficult patient may abruptly turn cooperative; the reward he seeks for good behavior is an extension of life. The author cites the poignant case of an opera singer, her face consumed by a fatal malignancy, who begged for a chance to sing one last time; thus, death would have to wait...
...After the bargaining stage, the patient generally sinks into a profound depression. This stage, the author believes, has a positive side. The patient is weighing the fearful price of death, preparing himself to accept the loss of everything and everyone he loves...
...fifth and final stage is acceptance, when at last the condemned patient bows to his sentence. "I think this is the miracle," the seminar was told by one woman who had steadfastly refused to accept the fact of her impending death. "I am ready now and not even afraid any more." She died the following...
Even after acceptance of the inevitable, it is the rare terminal case who abandons hope. When that occurs, says the author, death is imminent. In an age in which religious faith seems to be crumbling, hope provides the means of enduring the months and years of suffering and of living with the foreknowledge of death. "I don't think about dying, I think about living," said one indignant 53-year-old patient; his losing struggle was then in its 20th year...
...meant. Her message is above all for those around the dying patient, and it is one so obvious that it has long been overlooked. The dying are living too, bitter at being prematurely consigned-by indifference, false cheerfulness and isolation-to the bourn of the dead. It is not death they fear, but dying, a process almost as painful to see as to endure, and one on which society-and even medicine-so readily turns its back...