FootprintsintheWind.com

Today we have a place to
Breathe for you
Eat for you
& Keep you safely
Medicated
—Everything you’d ever
Want—O my!

:- Doug.

There is no natural reluctance
To converse of death and dying
‘Tis the work of culture—ours

:- Doug.

Caring is action; care is done to a thing. Caring is also shared, moves among us.

:- Doug.

If the meaning of life is life, then how much is in the completion of it?

:- Doug.

With the long tail illnesses we now have, we may not be able to choose our own deaths, but we certainly can deny our loved ones a gentle easy death. We subject them to hours and days of suffering and violence. Through ignorance.

:- Doug.

Every one is holy.

:- Doug.

Crisis medical sounds like a good term instead of emergency medical. Its root meaning is life and death decision point, and its connotation is people running around under emotional pressure and distress to do or not do something. So it is perhaps the term I should choose more often.

:- Doug.

Helping a client who does not want to be helped, or who is otherwise stubborn? This approach is useful, I think, as a first try: 1. Foremost, do not try to sell any outcome or value; 2. Move toward specific scenarios and wishes, preferably as a sliding scale; 3. Introduce idea that it is OK to change one’s mind.

What is most important to you now? Leave me alone or health? Being with people you like or being in a place you like? 17 Caring Continua. How can we choose for you if you are in a crisis? Is it ever OK for you to change your mind?

:- Doug.

Care: technically proficient but detached.

Caring: find what the client values and seeking engagement in bringing that to fruition.

:- Doug.

To counter something you don’t like, contribute something you’d like to see.

:- Doug.

Communicate your vision to everyone, inviting them to translate that vision into words and actions.

:- Doug.

You’re dying. I’m dying. There, we have said it. We are all dying. Some sooner than others. It is a matter of degree, of timing. It is a sure thing. Let us be kind to one another. So let’s talk about how we treat each other. While we’re dying.

:- Doug.

The more we can do to help a disease, the more uncertain the timing. As diseases move from acute to chronic, the less we know when our end is coming.

:- Doug.

My forte is the long conference. It is important to me to know people, to absorb one another.

:- Doug.

How can we serve other attorneys in Medicaid issues?

:- Doug.

Time does not exist apart from us. It is a human only construct.

:- Doug.

We can own this issue. We can engage medicine in the conversation. We can make it easier for the doctors to have the conversation.

:- Doug.

Fuzzy edges, anonymity allowed, reward conversation—these help spread the message.

:- Doug.

Even if we can’t change everything, everyone can change something.

:- Doug.

The question of living while we’re dying is one of living with uncertainty in the extreme. We don’t know what the next test or procedure will produce, but can we not live and love as if this were the day to do so?

:- Doug.

There is nothing wrong with looking for minuscule possibilities of extending life or regaining health. Unless we so clench our teeth we do not live our lives now as fully as ever we can.

:- Doug.

Ordinary medicine has its eyes on a someday far horizon; hospice on right now. Do you want to live a full life, when?

:- Doug.

Wait! You don’t have to give it all away to pay for nursing home.

:- Doug.