My friend’s experience with her dying friend
is not unusual. The process of dying is a complicated journey requiring
enormous patience, understanding, support, and courage for the person leaving
this planet as well as the loved ones left behind. Buddhism, whose central
philosophy is focused on death, describes dying it as one of the four great sufferings.
There have been countless books written on death. However, it is another matter
to confront the reality.
I am no stranger to dying and death.
Personally and professionally I know it from the inside out. Starting from when
I was thirteen when I nearly died from a gangrenous appendix, I know what it is
like to feel close to death. Had I not told my mother I was going to die if she
did not get me to a hospital that day, I probably would not be writing these
words. Immediate surgery saved my life. Ironically, a classmate of mine died
the same year from the same diagnosis. Because of my overwhelmed mother’s lack
of medical instinct, I made a vocational life in medically-affiliated careers
to make sure this did not happen to me again. Nearly dying did have some
benefits.
In addition
to having the experience of dying, I have also taken care of someone who
eventually died from a metastatic brain tumor. John, a psychologist friend of many years,
lasted four years after being diagnosed at the age of thirty-nine. He fought his diagnosis and subsequent
disabilities tooth and nail. Though I lived in LA at the time, I frequently was
on the phone to him and his ex-wife (his healthcare and financial guardian) in
Minneapolis about his shifting medical and emotional needs. He also went
through a toxic period as described above by my woman friend. At one point, he was being so difficult that I
told him if he continued down this path no one would take care of him when he lay
dying. Tough words needed to be spoken. Fortunately it changed his attitude and
bonded us closer together. During the last week of his life when he was in and
out of a coma, I returned to physically take care of him until he died at his
home. It was a daunting twenty-four hour a day feat to physically take care of
my bed-bound friend, administer his meds, and watch his life ebb. The support I
received from his ex-wife and other friends made it possible for John to die
with love and dignity. To this day, taking care of John while he was dying
was one of the most humbling services I have ever performed. I feel honored to
have been with him at the end.
On the other hand, my mother’s dying and death
was a nightmare. At the age of fifty-eight, she had a massive stroke. My
personal physician who saw her told me her condition was serious but I was
unable to emotionally grasp his forebodings. After almost three days, she awoke
from her coma unable to speak, utterly dependent on others for all of her care.
My mother, who was a very verbal yet a privately independent woman, endured
being trapped for weeks in her medical hell. My father, who had depended upon her, became
almost psychotic. This threw the rest of my family in chaos. After two weeks of
being hospitalized, she had a cardiac arrest. I made it to the hospital while
the medical staff were resuscitating her. One of the things my mother told me
prophetically about a month before she died is she never wanted to be placed
on life support. The valiant hospital arrest team worked on her without a pulse for an
hour, not wanting to give up because of her age. It is an absolute nightmare when you
know what a massive stroke your mother had which was now compounded by the fact she had not been oxygenating for an hour. The implications became instantly horrific. I
grabbed my father and said he had to stop this. He walked away insisting I
needed to make the decision. The nursing staff brought me into the room where I
had to tell the physicians working on her to cease. The visual impact of
watching them stop resuscitating her lifeless body will remain with me forever.
She had no chance of surviving this-both her medical team and I knew this. Never
have I had to do anything emotionally as courageous as I did that afternoon. My
only consolation is that my mother told me her wishes. But it was not in vain:
I feel my mother’s death was what made me a compassionate and effective medical
social worker. This experience has given me great empathy for family members
who also are asked to cut off or limit life support on their loved ones.
As a former medical social worker I saw a number of patient’s go through the process
of dying. They and their loved ones dance the last dance with myriad of
emotions, never in syncopated time. It is an art to process with a dying person and their loved ones a life’s worth of cemented patterns, unique circumstances, differing opinions, and a
tsunami of conflicts. This is why I have a Buddhist bent and encourage everyone
to talk honestly about death with their loved ones now. This falls frequently on
deaf ears. Almost everyone is deluded thinking they have time. We are mired
in superstitions about death, thinking we are morbid if we speak about it or
consider it jinxing fate. For those who do risk the somber discourse, it is an
uncomfortable subject to broach. To all of those squirming at this thought, I
will say I am grateful my mother divulged her wishes to me before she died. Had
she not, I may have endured a life’s worth of guilt whatever decision I
rendered that day.
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