Bye for Now
May 29, 2010
I am sad to say that this, my labor of love, must come to a close for now, maybe permanently. I am going to keep the website up in hopes that you will continue to find some resources as you or someone you love faces life-limiting illness.
The work I have done with Quality of Life Care has been a very rewarding experience and has given me so many opportunities to help people and be blessed as well. I have missed writing articles for this site as well as other projects with which I was involved with QLC and will miss this whole venture greatly. I will pass this on to the right person or agency that will take excellent care to continue on with Quality of Life Care’s mission.
My focus has been evolving to my main passion in my life’s work, and that is guiding families through those last days with a loved one. I am working very hard right now getting my practice off the ground in this field I call death midwifery. I have another site: http://aGentleGuide.com where I educate about this. You can find me there for now. I am still available for palliative care consults. Pls email me at deanna(at)aGentleGuide(dot)com anytime as usual, if you have any questions or need direction of some kind. If I can help you, I will.
Many blessings and peace to you all,
Deanna
Non-hospice Palliative Care
January 27, 2010
Please view the following video and see how palliative care can help a person long before hospice is an option. Read more
Non profit? for profit?
February 15, 2009
There is a blogpost with some interesting points and comments that I’d like you to read, The Danger of For-Profit Hospices.
The title alone gave me chills, did it do it to you too? I guess in some people’s minds, only those working in non-profits have the hospice heart, or give the best service and of course that is not true. It totally depends on the company.
Who owns the company is a good question Read more
Intensive Care? Home?
January 18, 2009
Food and the dying
August 26, 2008
Most of the time, a person who is dying does not want to eat or drink. It is hard on us who love the person, not on them usually.
I don’t believe in encouraging someone to eat or drink if they don’t want to and I don’t encourage placement of feeding tubes and IVs to give artificial nutrition and hydration to a person whose body is dying. It is the natural order of things that a person’s body dehydrates as it is dying. The dehydration of dying is normal.
I don’t know why I woke up thinking about all this, but there are some stories Read more
Take Advantage of Us
August 3, 2008
Use us, it’s something you may want to think about.
If someone you love is very ill in the ‘end stage’ of a disease process and there are no surgeries that will change the condition, think about calling a hospice. Not for the typical reason a person would call, i.e. ‘there is only 6 months to live’ but to Read more
A Gentle Guide
July 20, 2008
What I wanted to do when I began to visit lunch groups 3 years ago was to let people know I was here to help them go through the death of someone they loved. A sort of ‘midwife’ for the dying, or ‘doula’ to the dying. Read more
The Revolving Door
July 13, 2008
The following e-mail that Gail Sheehy wrote could have been written by many people who are living with illnesses in their end-stages.
She wrote about her and her husband’s experiences with frequent hospital visits and the medical predictions (that usually go with them) that often don’t pan out. Palliative care stops all this nonsense but few know about it. A person can be treated Read more
The Hospice Talk
June 28, 2008
Reading the article, Life and Death: Helping Families On Big Questions, made me think of a few things.
The article discusses how ethical committees and consultants in hospitals are being criticized for not being trained enough to talk with families regarding end of life issues. When I read this article, what I thought about is that hospice team members have these talks daily in their practice as a matter of course. We are part of family meetings where all kinds of difficult and emotional topics are discussed.
I’m not a trained ethicist or counselor. Neither are hospice nurses, doctors, social workers or chaplains who deal in this level of Read more
Midwives and Doulas…for the Dying
May 8, 2008
Have you heard of this before?
Most of us understand the midwife and doula role in the birthing process. Along with being an emotional and spiritual support for the family, the midwife is a skilled, trained practitioner who attends the birth of a baby. The doula provides emotional, spiritual comfort and logistical assistance. Read more
