LIVING WITH DYING
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Living here on my own. I would until I really couldn't. I think she would try and she's Short spaces of times and we're fine but not for a long time and so that could never be a consideration. I have a very good friend, a neighbour who comes in and helps me now and does a lot of work for me but again she's older than I am and there'll be a time when she won't be able to do it either and ok I've got church people but you can only put onto them, or not put onto them.
Five residents speak: the meaning of living with dying in a long-term care home.
I mean people are willing to help but when it becomes sort of day in day out it's really too much to ask them to do it, so that's why I am looking for either a rest home that Another woman, who also had lung disease, explained why she would like to have the option of hospice care. She wanted to die with dignity, in a peaceful setting, with help and support, and she wanted good pain control. She also wanted pastoral care to prepare for her death, and support for her teenage children. She was angry about inequalities in funding and her inability to find a bed in a hospice.
Audio only Text only Read below Please enable Javascript to watch this video view profile Now Playing Suggests that hospice care would allow her to die with dignity. Female Age at diagnosis: Part time piano teacher, married, 2 children You were saying that a friend of yours has died recently and it's been making you think about the care people have when they're dying ' Yes, very much.
Can you tell me a bit about that? Well, she had a cancer, a form of cancer, she was given hospice care. She was given her dignity, she was allowed to have her dignity when she died. She was in the hospice with her family around her and her last few days made wonderful, you know, taken to the cinema and days out, so her family on her last few days had days to look back at, but where with my disease and people with other diseases which aren't cancer, we don't have that.
We don't have the palliative care, which we should be getting. Some health authorities will have a palliative care unit but it depends if you live in the right road, really.
It's the old postcode lottery. A few miles down the road from where I live there is palliative care but because I live 5 miles away from that, I don't get it. My Social Services only have ordinary home care, which is personal care, and anything else I have to ask for.
There isn't a place for me to go for respite to give my family a rest; there isn't a support to help my family prepare for what lies ahead of us. I'm having to do it all on my own and try and cope on my own and try and prepare my family on my own when I should be really trying to take time to prepare for my ending and what I want to do, and have the time to do the things instead of losing my time preparing everybody else when I really feel it would be helpful if somebody was there to help me prepare them and let them accept it. Ideally, what do you think you need? Pain control is one thing that there is, with hospice care you have a pain management team.
I receive a treatment at Emory Hospital about every three weeks and come home to recover afterward. You know they need as much support as possible and bless their hearts. I tried concentrating on not complaining about the way I felt. I had so much to be thankful for, and I was wasting so much of my precious time. It is now NHS policy that everyone with a life-threatening illness should have access to appropriate palliative care services, the current government strategy is to support more people dying at home. I've since learnt that I've got to provide it for myself unless I'm so ill that the doctor says, 'Oh no, you've really got to go to hospital'. Life in the Face of Death
With non-hospice, you don't. There are pain clinics but they're few and far between and you're lucky if you get on to one. You have Macmillan nurses with cancers, with me we don't. We have the breathing nurses but when you bear in mind there's 3 nurses and there's probably 3 or 4, lung patients under their care they can't come and look after all of us.
So you end up learning how to cope on your own. You have to rely on your GPs, it's okay if you've got a good GP and who is willing to come out. Some GP practices will come out when you call them; others will come out automatically. Once again it's the postcode lottery whether they've got the money to do it. It's not their fault if the government doesn't give the money.
Terminal cancer: how to live with dying | Life and style | The Guardian
Also there's the chance to meet other people in the same situation as myself. Within the hospice care it's a peaceful, having visited friends in a hospice, there's a lovely peaceful, tranquil feeling' a feeling of reverence and total dignity. Where if I go for respite, it's in the local cottage hospital with lots of hip patients, etc What would you really like to happen? You say you'd like hospice care. You said why that's not possible.
Given that reality, what then would you want? The basic things I've been given from the District Nurse, like the bed and the oxygen machine and stuff. Knowing that there's going to be somebody there for my family afterwards. Prepare, you know help in preparing my family. I try to do as much groundwork as I can myself by going to the library and reading as much as I can and finding books which are the right books to give to my children to prepare them.
I've written a poem for them, my son and I have recently written a song so that he's got something positive to work on when it's going to be a negative time. It hasn't been easy, there's been many tears while we've been doing it. He's got everybody else and it's quite an elderly area so he's got a lot of elderly people to look after.
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And sometimes, because you're young, whether you're terminally ill or not, you get forgotten. You go by the by where with hospices you have the hospice chaplain who's trained and has got an understanding of waiting for death, more so than the everyday chaplain. I'm angry because the government doesn't make sure that everybody's equal. This is not right, this is wrong. There's so many people with so many different illnesses at so many different ages; you've got young kiddies.
Things are beginning to change with the hospice care for children; they are beginning to take all different illnesses, which is brilliant. You know they need as much support as possible and bless their hearts. But also the parents who get ill, they need as much support as well, and I think the attitudes of this government and the medical people out there, they have got to look at everybody in an equal way. We've all got to be treated equally. You've just tried to add this video to your Watchlist so you can watch it later.
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By creating an account, you acknowledge that PBS may share your information with our member stations and our respective service providers, and that you have read and understand the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. Learn More about PBS online sponsorship. While most Americans say they want to die at home, in reality, most people die somewhere else. This program is a revealing look into the lives of an ethnically diverse group of Coloradans facing end-of-life decisions. Patients and families are not overwhelmed with fear and trepidation, but rather with feelings of peace and gratitude.
Narrated by local broadcast veteran Ed Sardella.
Editorial Reviews. Review. Berzoff's and Silverman's text is a compendium of educational Living with Dying: A Handbook for End-of-Life Healthcare Practitioners (End-of-Life Care: A Series) - Kindle edition by Joan Berzoff, Phyllis R. The first resource on end-of-life care for healthcare practitioners who work with the terminally ill and their families, Living with Dying begins with the narratives of .
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