The April meeting, which dealt with death and dying, was intended\nto be the last in our life-cycle series. The response from women who attended the\nmeeting or read the meeting notes was so strong, however, that we extended the\ntopic to include more end-of-life issues at today\u2019s meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jeanette Powell <\/strong>received a medical\ndiagnosis in 1999 that indicated a need for surgery. The fact that her\nprognosis was poor prompted her to designate power-of-attorney to her children,\nbut she found they did not want to discuss the issue. Fortunately, Jeanette\u2019s\nsurgery was successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n She recently turned 65 and, though well, wanted to talk with\nher children about end-of-life issues. Jeanette is Jewish; her children are\nMethodist, Unitarian, Jehovah\u2019s Witness, and one with no preferred\ndenomination. Jeanette began thinking about what arrangements she wants when\nshe dies. She wrote her children two letters, which she called her \u201cfive wishes,\u201d\nand appointed her eldest daughter to make medical decisions. One child\nresponded that she could never make a decision to \u201cpull the plug\u201d; Jeanette\nassured her that no such decisions would have to be made, that they had already\nbeen made by her. Now Jeanette\u2019s children know what she wants in terms of a\nreligious service and observances. They have since reported that some of their\nfriends do not know what to do when their parents die. Jeanette intends to\nwrite more letters, in greater detail, so as to spare her children any unnecessary\nanxiety or questions. Her children tell her now that they value knowing what\nshe wants. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy Riffer<\/strong>\u2019s husband challenged many\ndoctors about the necessity for further cancer treatment. He refused additional\nchemotherapy, having already had two rounds of chemotherapy and radiation\ntreatment. Knowing he was dying, he invited his colleagues at LeMoyne College\nto talk with him; he was interested in hearing the things they remembered about\nhim and telling them of his memories of them. He thought there should be\nsomething like \u201cLamaze for Dying,\u201d for birthing into the next life. He read The Tibetan Book of the Dead.<\/em> He began to practice leaving\nhis body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy was with him the night he died. At 2:00 that afternoon\nhe had called to Nancy. He was having difficulty breathing. He finally said to\nher, \u201cI have to go now. I want you to be with me, but do not do anything.\u201d He\nturned and faced the wall; his breathing slowed and finally stopped. Nancy\ndescribed her husband\u2019s death as \u201cso natural.\u201d She stayed with him until he was\ncold because she needed to know he was not coming back. Although she understood\nher husband\u2019s turning away from her, the experience left her feeling abandoned.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phyllis Berman<\/strong> described her\njourney as a breast cancer survivor. Having recovered from breast cancer\nsurgery, she had the terrifying experience of collapsing at her sister\u2019s lake\nhouse. She was afraid she had had a seizure. Her speech was slurred, the\nfeeling in her face changed, her handwriting was affected, and she found she\ncould not carry a tune (distressing because she is a trained singer). She was\nadvised to get a CAT scan and an MRI, which revealed a tumor in her brainstem;\nthe prognosis was six months to one year. For the next two weeks, Phyllis said,\nshe and her husband woke up every morning crying and holding each other. She\nwas regretting what she would miss in the lives of her family. Then, suddenly,\nshe decided not to lament. She is Zen Buddhist and decided to live in the\npresent. Phyllis asked her doctor what happens when one dies of a brain tumor.\nShe was told that it is not so bad, but that she should refuse intravenous nutrition\nand hydration. She handwrote a proxy for a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate order),\nspecifying explicitly no hydration, no nutrition. She went on to express her\ndesires for her funeral, such as wanting a pine box. She stopped working in\npsychotherapy, and a therapist friend helped by referring Phyllis\u2019s patients to\nother therapists. Another friend organized a reception with food, music, and\nthe dedication of a memorial bench with flowers at Syracuse University. She\ndescribed it as a \u201cwake\u201d at which she was present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Phyllis then described how she started to enjoy herself through\nZen Buddhism and tai chi. She sought various forms of spiritual healing. She\nwent to Nepal on a spiritual\/healing journey. The shaman she saw there went\ninto a trance and told her that she had an open heart, no evil spirits, and\nthat her tumor was shrinking. Phyllis also participated in a faith-healing\nsession with a spiritualist by the name of Amazing Grace, who touched her\nforehead and, she believes, further healed her. Phyllis is now back at work\npart-time. She feels like the experience has been very instructive. She has yet\nto tell her children what she wants for a funeral, but she found Jeanette\u2019s\nstory very compelling. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Betsy Wiggins<\/strong> described her experiences\nas her father became progressively more ill with Alzheimer\u2019s disease. Early on,\nwhile still perfectly cogent, he had expressed his desire to have absolutely no\nheroic measures performed to prolong his life. Later, however, when he was no\nlonger able to make his desires known, he developed a severe heart arrhythmia,\nwhich frequently caused his blood pressure to plummet and precipitated sudden\nfalls. Most of the family decided that implanting a pacemaker was preferable to\nthe option of continued falls that would have surely resulted in a broken leg\nor hip and subsequent confinement to bed, being that he was not a good\ncandidate for rehabilitation. He lingered on for years, sinking deeper into\ndementia, eventually developing a severe infection. Last winter the family was asked\nfor permission to move him to a hospital for treatment, but he mercifully died\nbefore a decision was reached. Betsy deeply regrets that her father\u2019s wishes\nwere not honored, although she understands how difficult it was for the family\nto feel like they were \u201cstanding by and doing nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dorothea Nelson<\/strong>\u2019s\nmother, from a Greek peasant family, died of tuberculosis in 1939, at the age\nof 30. It was then the custom in her mother\u2019s Greek Orthodox Church in\nMassachusetts to shun TB victims because the disease was thought to be a\nvisitation from the devil. Her mother decided to become a Jehovah\u2019s Witness,\ncausing tremendous tension in the family; her father remained a devout Greek\nOrthodox. Dorothea remembers that the week her mother died, she saw her aunt\n(who had stayed close to the family) and her uncle take out her mother\u2019s wedding\ndress, with no explanation. People started to come to the house, bringing food,\nwhich was unusual because hers was not a wealthy family. It was only after the\nburial that Dorothea was told of her mother\u2019s death. Only recently did Dorothea\nobtain a copy of her mother\u2019s obituary; she felt she needed it in order to achieve\nsome final closure that was denied to her as a child. She now accepts death as\na natural part of life, but she had no understanding of illness or death from\nher early childhood experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nancy Sullivan Murray<\/strong> recounted\nher experience of having had a heart attack last year. She also described how\nmeaningful one of the WTB life-cycle meetings about death and dying had been to\nher. She shared her desire, upon her death, to have her body washed, shrouded,\nand placed in a pine box, and to have her daughters be present if they wanted\nto be. This is the Muslim way of burial that we learned about when Beatrice Muhammad\ninformed WTB about this sacred duty that she herself performs for her sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Peggy Thompson<\/strong>\u2019s stepfather died\nof leukemia when he was 44 and she was 16. Her mother decided she was too young\nto go to the funeral, leaving her confused and hurt. She described feeling responsible\nfor taking care of her distraught and depressed mother as a young girl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sharing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Many other women shared their experiences dealing with illness; with the\nanxiety, confusion and fear of dying felt by the individuals and their\nfamilies; and with the choices families make in coping, and how those choices\naffect people for years. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the face of death, many individuals and families feel anxiety, confusion and fear. Speakers talked about what happened when they faced the possibility of dying or when a loved one died and how that experience impacted them. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":7864,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-7772","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-programs","tag-lifecycle",""],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7772"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8585,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7772\/revisions\/8585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7864"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wtb.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}