Dear Readers,
Starting Monday (or Tuesday at the latest) thecheckoutline.org is going to get a beautiful facelift. Newer, brighter graphics, easy-to-access questions and answers — and a great big envelope icon for our readers to click on whenever they want to email me a question about death or dying.
Joe Perez of Zealous Marketing, my brilliant Master-Tech, [...]
Topping the list of professionals who never get the acclaim and admiration they deserve are hospice nurses. Jeanne Frye, whose nursing career has been devoted to caring for the terminally ill, was the first to point this out to me.
Unlike doctors, hospice nurses really get to know their patients. Not just the patient’s symptoms; not [...]
Dear Readers –
I very rarely plug other sites, but I have to make an exception in this instance. Lee Hancock and her colleagues on the Dallas Morning News have done an incredible job of explaining what dying means — and how it is dealt with by doctors, caretakers and hospices. The series can be found, [...]
Dear Judy,
Our mother is dying of cirrhosis of the liver, and my guess is (and the doctor’s) — she has maybe four or five months left. She looks distended, obviously. She’s pretty lethargic, but when she’s awake, I think she understands most of what we say.
My problem is our stepfather. He’s not a bad man. He stands [...]
Since I volunteer at the Community Hospice of Washington, most people assume I’m a particular fan of hospice care. And in many ways I am.
Hospices aren’t the dreary, depressing places a lot of them used to be. The in-patient units are great at relieving pain with super-charged meds. Home care patients are relieved to have [...]
Dear Judy,
Eight years ago my wife died, leaving me with a son, who is now 14. At the time, I weighed the pros and cons (I even went to a shrink for advice on the subject), and in the end I decided my son should be spared his mother’s funeral. Bad enough he lost her, [...]
Dear Judy,
I have a 17-year-old son whom I never met. (Well I met him, but only for a few moments when he was born; I gave him up for adoption, and it wasn’t an “open” adoption).
Nonetheless, I happen to know where he lives; and I also know the names of his parents. I won’t go [...]
Dear Judy,
The man my mother married when I was 13 is now dying of lung cancer. My mother has just informed me I have to spend time with him at least one evening or afternoon a week. (So does his grown son, but that guy is a blood relative. I’m not).
My stepfather was always perfectly decent [...]
For about the 10th time since I started this site in May, someone ostensibly literate and intelligent has written in, describing himself as “very healthy — in fact healthier than almost anyone I know.” Unfortunately this healthy person has no Will.
Only boundless optimism about a future that seems to include immortality.
The advice-seeker does, however, have an excuse [...]
Almost as bad as an incompetent doctor, is the one who handles bad news even worse than the patient.
Let’s face it, most doctors and nurses just don’t want to discuss dying. So here’s what usually happens: the patient gets an unhappy diagnosis, then a lot of mumbling spiced with incomprehensible medical jargon, then leaves the office, and [...]
Welcome to theCheckoutLine.org
Posted on January 24th, 2009