Interpretations

[Starman]

I have had people ask me how can you work with people who are dying? I find it brings tremendous spiritual and emotional growth to me, and I realize that it is not for everyone or anyone. But someone has to do this kind of work and I consider it to be a privilege to be with a person as they leave this Earth.

The difference between hospital and hospice is that generally hospital is there to cure people, save their lives, etc., and hospice is not there to save a person’s life, rather it’s work is to do pain management, make a patient comfortable, and let them die with dignity.

If a person in hospital has a heart attack the staff does CPR and tries to save that person’s life, if a patient in a hospice has a heart attack no CPR is done, you just let the person die. During the pandemic lots of hospital nurses and doctors became upset because so many people were dying under their care; this is normal in a hospice.

The word hospice comes from the word hospitality, and while hospitality centers for the dying have been around for many centuries, the modern day hospice movement started in London, England back in 1967. Hospice strives to help people understand death as a natural experience but it does not impose any spiritual values on its residents/patients.

I am learning so much from talking to people who are approaching the death of their physical human body. They are giving me much more than I am giving them. It is interesting that most people who are terminally ill, even if they were an atheist their whole life, become interested in the concept of a higher power or God.