Hospice=I C Hope, Don't you!

When patients and families experience the inevitable shift for treatment focused on "doing everything" to "do something", but just don't "do nothing" there is an entire cascade of emotions. The journey is personal depending on our life experience, knowledge of disease, relationship to the person who is seriously ill and really our beliefs and biases. So often I have heard decisions being made for someone that is not about them at all. Why do we allow this to happen? We are afraid, but what is fear (this is for another post)?

When I work with patients and families the first thing I explain is hospice does not mean giving up, letting go or betraying the love and trust for the person whom decisions is being made. In fact it is the most natural decision that can be made, because it allows the person to have their needs responded to without distraction from interventions that can result in more trauma (mental, emotional, spiritual). We call symptoms as they exist-pain=pain, nausea=nausea, cough=cough, shortness of breath=shortness of breath. This is just an intro for more to come and i will explore each of these symptoms in detail offering both the physical, physiologic explanation combined with conscious explanation. I will also offer tips for how treat these symptoms with physical medicine and energy/intuitive medicine.