{"id":497,"date":"2017-04-24T13:33:17","date_gmt":"2017-04-24T17:33:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/?p=497"},"modified":"2017-07-25T16:44:10","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T20:44:10","slug":"live-in-the-moment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/live-in-the-moment\/","title":{"rendered":"Live in the Moment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Live in the Moment<\/em><\/p>\n

Live in the moment and really appreciate what I have are the most central feelings after volunteering in this hospice program. This experience makes me truly feel the death and dying process. At the beginning, death was only a word to me; nothing really came up to my mind when I thought about it. However, the first time I started to have some feelings about this dying process was in January: the uncontrolled feeling when we get old. I remembered when I helped Jenny<\/em>, an aide, to turn this old lady, she said she was thirsty and wanted some water, so Jenny<\/em> grabbed a cup of water with a straw and tried to let her suck up the water. However, she failed to do so, so they found a syringe and injected the water into her mouth. This experience doesn\u2019t sound special, but that day when I got home I felt really sad, I couldn’t believe it. Right now, I\u2019m 20 years old, and I can drink water whenever I want. I don’t need people to help me, but when I get older, and I can’t control myself, even if the water is right in front of me, I just can’t drink it. It\u2019s like having a thirsty traveler in the desert and put a bottle of water in front of him, but he doesn’t have the strength to open the bottle. This was the first time I started to realize what having no control really means.<\/p>\n

Another thing I learned was the impermanence of life. There was a girl, Cathy<\/em>, she stayed in room 816 several weeks in March because of cancer. However, she was only 29 years old. Usually, patients in hospice are old, most of them are around 70 years old. Patients under 50 were considered young, and this young lady was only 27. Her family said they will take care of her and her parents only speak Chinese, so usually volunteers didn’t have a chance to communicate with them. Fortunately, I speak Chinese, so I\u2019ve talked to her family few times. I felt that her family is compromising Cathy’s<\/em> death, because they can\u2019t do anything for her, except for staying with her. I have an idol who is also 29 years old; he is doing great in his career, winning many awards in several ceremonies, but this lady is dying in the room. I suddenly felt that life is impermanent. When Cathy<\/em> was 20, she probably didn’t think that she would die 9 years later, her parents wouldn’t think about this either. Cathy<\/em> even got married, her life just started, but it\u2019s quickly ending. I really feel sad, and think that appreciating what I have now and living in the moment are the most important things.<\/p>\n

\u201cDeath and dying\u201d is not a simple topic, and I feel that it takes time to realize it. I\u2019ve been doing this hospice volunteer program for my whole sophomore year, but I only started to learn something from the second semester. I\u2019m glad to know about death and dying at this young age and it was great to know all these wonderful staff members and work with them; they really care about their patients.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Live in the Moment Live in the moment and really appreciate what I have are the most central feelings after volunteering in this hospice program. This experience makes me truly feel the death and dying process. At the beginning, death was only a word to me; nothing really came up to my mind when I … Continue reading “Live in the Moment”<\/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":[24],"class_list":["post-497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hospice","school-u_pitt","program_year-24"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497","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=497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":687,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497\/revisions\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"school","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/school?post=497"},{"taxonomy":"program_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.athenainstitute.com\/ahp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program_year?post=497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}