I love volunteering in hospitals, seeing patients light up as I bring books, drinks, or pillows for them. But volunteering in hospice is different. I have nothing to offer patients but myself, my presence, and my comfort. Even though many patients on the floor are terminally ill, the idea of death was brought up very infrequently.<\/p>\n
At the end of my very first shift, I met John<\/em>, who had just been admitted to the hospice unit that day. As soon as I walked in, he just wouldn\u2019t stop talking. I learned about his childhood journeys to school, his time in the Army, his job as a certified plumber, and his precious children. Before long, I wished him goodbye and had to go home. Every week after that, I would stop by his room to hear his life story over and over again; despite how many times he may have told it, I never got tired of the smiles and laughter that carried him through our conversations. Week after week, I saw John<\/em> get weaker and weaker. At first, he was joyfully sitting in his bedside chair, eating lunch in the kitchen area in his walker chair and giving me words of advice each time I said goodbye. He talked less and less, needing to take long breaths between each sentence and even falling asleep in the middle of a sentence.<\/p>\n A few weeks passed, and John<\/em> was bedbound, only able to muster a few words at a time. One day, I walked in to John\u2019s<\/em> son sitting at his bedside. I recognized immediately that this was the son whom John<\/em> had raved to me about a hundred times before. I finally had the chance to explain to his son proud how proud John<\/em> was of him, taking his dream job. At this point, John<\/em> was struggling to breath, holding on for dear life. This was the first ever conversation I had about death. I learned from his son that John<\/em> had stage 4 terminal cancer. I could tell that John\u2019s<\/em> son was scared, but also grateful that he had the chance to be with his father in his last days.<\/p>\n Throughout my time volunteering with hospice patients, I learned that patients themselves often don\u2019t talk about death. There is often a constant tug-of-war between dying patients and their families. Multiple other patients I visited had family members who were able to recognize the patients\u2019 deteriorating condition and accept their imminent death, while patients themselves seemed reticent about it. Physicians and nurses are also wary of talking about death, for the hospital is meant for saving people, not letting people die. But conversations about death just come with the job. Dying in hospice is becoming increasingly common, and I am prepared to have the important conversations with my own patients in the future. I love volunteering in hospitals, seeing patients light up as I bring books, drinks, or pillows for them. But volunteering in hospice is different. I have nothing to offer patients but myself, my presence, and my comfort. Even though many patients on the floor are terminally ill, the idea of death was brought up very … Continue reading “Lets (Not) Talk About Death”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"school":[9],"program_year":[30],"class_list":["post-1127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospice","school-u_pitt","program_year-30"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1127"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1227,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1127\/revisions\/1227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=1127"},{"taxonomy":"program_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_year?post=1127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nI have never feared death. For me, death is just something that just happens, whether you\u2019re prepared for it or not. Everyone dies and that\u2019s the end. I learned that death is not just an end; rather, it\u2019s a long process of finding meaning and reflecting on life. As unavoidable as death is, I will strive to live each day as happy as I can be. The future isn\u2019t endless, but we can still pretend that it is.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"