This past year has been an exceptional learning experience for me. In addition to volunteering for Hospice of Piedmont, I have been taking a course titled “Intro to U.S. Healthcare” which explores the United States’ health systems. Last week, for example, our seminar’s topic for the week was “Aging, Geriatrics, Dying and Bioethics.” Many of the themes that we discussed during this class period were things that we have talked about during our hospice reflections throughout the semesters. Most of our society views death, dying, and disease as a failure of our ability to prolong a person’s life. Over the years the US has been successful in increasing the average life expectancy for both males and females and, at times, this is the result of preventative and some extremes to help the prolongment of care. Many equate the prolongment of a person’s life as a success because it typically means they’ve lived their lives to the fullest in the way they sought fit. When we see people pass at younger ages, we typically regard this as a tragedy so doctors do all that they can to avoid this.
Prior to this experience, I rarely thought about death and old age or even accepting the two. I sometimes bring up the fact that my father’s passing is the first encounter that I had with death and realizing that my parents aren’t actually going to be around forever. I remember being upset with God and not understanding why a medical procedure that was designed to prolong his life and keep him around with his family longer actually ended up contributing to this untimely death. I now don’t feel like death is an enemy. Death is an inevitable experience of life that I can’t just shun and pretend like it’s not coming. At times, tragedies happen in life which may succumb people to their death but in the end the importance lies in the person being able to make peace.
One of my most meaningful hospice relationships was with a elderly woman that we can call Meredith. Upon meeting Meredith, you could tell how sweet of a person she was. She was more than ecstatic to have a person to talk to about her life and was very genuine during our interaction. She immediately opened up to me and told me all about her past, her children, her grandchildren, her late husband and so on. She discussed her faith and how she felt about being in the hospice center. She had come to terms with the fact that it was soon going to be her time to let go and that her faith was essentially the foundation of a lot of things in her life. She inspired me because I could tell that her belief in God and her faith have always been unwavering.
Volunteering for hospice has made me realize the importance of accepting death in some cases as a person’s way of meeting peace. Even though performing and seeking extraordinary measures may be what physicians are used to so that they can say they’ve done everything they can do for the patient, at times this proves not to be the ideal way for a patient approaching their end of life. Being comfortable with death is a powerful and a very healing thing. I appreciate the fact that I was able to explore this aspect about myself and life which was originally one that made me uncomfortable to talk about in the first place. I hope that in the near future I am also able to help my patients come to the same realizations that I have been able to come to during my undergraduate experience.