We tend to forget that life is a terminal illness. We are born, we experience, and then we die. All of living is on the road to death. How is that for a downer?   The thing is dying is a part of living. Like living, it has stages – a road to travel. The road from […]

Dear Barbara, I have two questions please, if you would help. 1. My Mother’s eyes turned color a few hours before she died. Do you know anything about this? 2. When my Mother was struggling (fighting) at the end the pulse oximeter displayed no numbers, the hospice nurse said, ‘She’s gone.’ However, my Mother still […]

Dear Barbara, Is the process of dying different for the elderly? Is it different for children? There is no difference for a young person dying from disease, a medium aged or an older person. People dying from disease, whether old or young or in-between, go through the same process.  An older person with no disease […]

My dementia knowledge revolves around the end of life process. I know it is a symptom of various diseases rather than a disease itself. I know that as we get old our mind naturally has bits of dementia— memory loss being a major “old age” symptom.  I know that dementia doesn’t play by the rules […]

Dear Barbara, I have two friends who recently died from strokes. They were both in their 90’s. They were heavily sedated and died within days. I know narcotics can slow breathing to the point where a person stops breathing and dies. Could hospices be using narcotics to euthanize their patients? I can’t respond directly to […]

I’ve frequently said that “other people die, not me or anyone close to me.” It’s a statement that seems to fit most people’s attitude toward death. “I’m not going to talk about death. I’m not going to make any plans, like an Advanced Directive. I’ll address those issues later” is basically how we approach end […]

First let’s clarify the word dying. Aside from the fact that we are all dying a bit with every breath we take, that life is a terminal illness, there comes a time when the body’s breathing, functioning ends. The above is the time I am referring to when I say dying is not a medical […]

Terminal restlessness is a medical term for agitation as end of life approaches. It usually begins one to three weeks before death from disease or old age. The restlessness shows itself  by random body movements, hands picking the air or clothing, mumbling, talking but not making sense, by just not being settled and quiet. The […]

Dear Barbara, I work for a hospice. We have had a couple of patients die by suicide. Do you have any suggestions on care for our staff as they are having difficulty processing these deaths?  Most people who can’t be fixed think about suicide in the months before death. Interestingly, very few actually do it. […]

First I’m going to switch from the word Alzheimer’s to the word dementia. Alzheimer’s is a specific disease associated with dementia. Dementia as defined by the Oxford Language Dictionary is a “condition characterized by progressive or persistent loss of intellectual functioning, especially with impairment of memory and abstract thinking and often with personality change, resulting […]