Word: deaths
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...covered with a colorful afghan. Questions like "Doctor, am I going to die?" are answered honestly. "Deception is not as creative as truth," says Saunders firmly. "We do best in life if we look at it with clear eyes, and I * think that applies to coming up to death as well...
...comparison, says Patient Phyllis Sadler, 87, "I am looked after with such love and kindness here." So well does St. Christopher's revivify its new patients, physically, mentally and spiritually, that 15% of them are soon well enough to return home, even though they seemed only days from death when they arrived. At home they are looked after by the hospice's team of five visiting nurses and a doctor on 24-hour call. Even after a patient dies, St. Christopher's offers bereavement counseling to relatives...
...Still, death is a relentless presence and that can take a toll on the staff. Dame Cicely has helped create a system of team support, with doctors, nurses and social workers watching one another for signs of stress. "Sharing of grief is absolutely essential," says Psychiatrist Parkes. That goes for Dame Cicely as well. In her 21 years at St. Christopher's, more than 13,000 people have died, including her mother. "If death doesn't get to you, I doubt you should be in it," she admits, and in the past, she has consulted a psychiatrist for problems...
...children, are admitted at all hours. Dogs stroll around, visiting their sick owners. Some patients sip whiskey with their visitors. "It's like a five-star hotel," says an elderly patient. More, perhaps, it is a throwback to the early days of the century, when care from birth to death was normally delivered at home. As Matron Duffield observes, "A hospital would insist on a strict diet for a dying diabetic patient. We serve chocolate cake." Saunders calls it creating an ambience of safety. "We make it possible to face the unsafety of death...
...never lost her sense that death "is an outrage" for those left behind. "It's an outrage when a young father or mother dies, leaving two kids, or two old people who have spent 50 years together are parted." She is sustained by her belief that "this isn't the end, and parting isn't forever." For those who take a more secular view of death, there are very practical reasons for the hospice philosophy. "We must not lose the chance," she says, "of making good on a great deal of untidiness in our lives, or of making time...