Lynn, while working as an ICU nurse at Johns Hopkins Hospital, had a patient who had been in a coma for several weeks:
“While in Charlie’s room doing his daily care, I would talk to him about the weather or the daily news, or mention a movie I saw. Sometimes I teased him about what I had had for dinner the night before, comparing it to the delicious tube feedings he was receiving for dinner. I even sang along to the radio that his wife left tuned to his favorite radio station.
“One day after completing his morning care, I turned Charlie on his side facing away from me. I continued going about my work while talking to him. I joked that it was not polite to have your back to someone when being spoken to. Well, you can imagine my amazement when Charlie turned his head to look at me.
“Why he chose that moment to wake up, I will never know for certain. But maybe he really didn’t want to appear rude having his back toward the person who was speaking to him, and what I said struck a chord.
“Over the next few weeks, Charlie continued to improve. He was moved out of the ICU and eventually went home. Several months later, a man and his wife stopped by the ICU to visit. It was Charlie.
“I did not recognize him. He had put on weight and looked so different from the unconscious man in the hospital bed. He had stopped by to thank all the nurses who cared for him while in the ICU.
“Charlie told us that he had vague memories of hearing his name called and of people talking and singing, and even music on the radio playing while he was unconscious. His wife jokingly said it was the angels coming for him, but because he was so ornery, they didn’t want him. We all laughed, but I had finally gotten my answer about whether coma patients can hear.
“This experience reinforced for me that what I do every day for my patients makes a difference. I know I was not the only nurse who took care of Charlie, talked to him or sang along to the radio. But I smile every time I think that Charlie woke up on my shift.”
~Lynn Heiderman
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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Many people who appear to be in deep coma (a state of unresponsiveness from which an individual has not yet been aroused) are not. Although their eyes are closed, they can hear what is being said. While one person described as being in a coma may be totally unaware of his/her state or environment, another may have some or even full awareness, contrary to our own perception of their condition.
Take the example of 23-year-old Judy, who was in a coma for three months. A professor, making daily rounds with his medical students, would pass by Judy’s bed every day, saying, “Judy is in a coma. She’ll never wake up.”
Judy came out of her coma and said she “always remembered that darn professor refusing to stop by my bed, saying that I would not wake up!”
Or how about Brian, who spent 18 months in a coma caused by a car accident a few weeks after his high school graduation in June 1991. His parents, Don and Fran, took him home from Hospital in January 1992. Brian couldn’t move or talk, his eyes locked in a blank stare. “It was a look that went right through you,” says Fran.
They cared for him, hired a physical therapist to keep his muscles from atrophying, and didn’t stop hoping. A year and a half after the accident, they noticed a change.
“You could see a slow awakening,” says Fran. “It was like he was talking through his eyes. They just came alive.”
He started speaking six months later—his first word was ‘Mom’. “It was pure joy,” his mother says.
Although Brian’s body will never be the same since his accident (he only has partial use of one limb and has memory problems and seizures), he is able to do many things with the help of his parents, his wheelchair, and a specially trained dog named Sara.
The doctors who treated him right after his accident are astonished by his progress: “When I think about Brian, I think about when I first saw him in the intensive care unit and so close to death,” says the neurosurgeon who treated him. “Now, when his parents come in with pictures of him hitting tennis balls in his wheelchair and swimming laps in a pool, it’s hard to imagine.”
Knowing many people have the potential for recovery, if you have a loved one in a coma talk to her/him (about recent and distant events in her/his life; favorite sporting events and holidays; news around the world, a book you recently read; the weather), play her/his favorite music, look for eye-blinks and make simple requests (“Can you move a finger?”).
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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These I, singing in spring, collect for lovers,
(For who but I should understand lovers and all their sorrow and joy?
And who but I should be the poet of comrades?)
Collecting I traverse the garden the world, but soon I pass the gates,
Now along the pond-side, now wading in a little, fearing not the wet,
Now by the post-and-rail fences where the old stones thrown there,
pick’d from the fields, have accumulated,
(Wild-flowers and vines and weeds come up through the stones and
partly cover them, beyond these I pass,)
Far, far in the forest, or sauntering later in summer, before I
think where I go,
Solitary, smelling the earthy smell, stopping now and then in the silence,
Alone I had thought, yet soon a troop gathers around me,
Some walk by my side and some behind, and some embrace my arms or neck,
They the spirits of dear friends dead or alive, thicker they come, a
great crowd, and I in the middle,
Collecting, dispensing, singing, there I wander with them,
Plucking something for tokens, tossing toward whoever is near me,
Here, lilac, with a branch of pine,
Here, out of my pocket, some moss which I pull’d off a live-oak in
Florida as it hung trailing down,
Here, some pinks and laurel leaves, and a handful of sage,
And here what I now draw from the water, wading in the pondside,
(O here I last saw him that tenderly loves me, and returns again
never to separate from me,
And this, O this shall henceforth be the token of comrades, this
calamus-root shall,
Interchange it youths with each other! let none render it back!)
And twigs of maple and a bunch of wild orange and chestnut,
And stems of currants and plum-blows, and the aromatic cedar,
These I compass’d around by a thick cloud of spirits,
Wandering, point to or touch as I pass, or throw them loosely from me,
Indicating to each one what he shall have, giving something to each;
But what I drew from the water by the pond-side, that I reserve,
I will give of it, but only to them that love as I myself am capable
of loving.
~Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
Leaves Of Grass (1871-72)
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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These pools that, though in forests, still reflect
The total sky almost without defect,
And like the flowers beside them, chill and shiver,
Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone,
And yet not out by any brook or river,
But up by roots to bring dark foliage on.
The trees that have it in their pent-up buds
To darken nature and be summer woods —
Let them think twice before they use their powers
To blot out and drink up and sweep away
These flowery waters and these watery flowers
From snow that melted only yesterday.
~Robert Frost
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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This is my absolute favorite time of the year.
Spring—freshness and vibrancy, the sense of hope and new life.
And if you planted something in memory of your beloved, it’s the yearly budding of memories and blossoming of love you have with a deceased loved one.
Go for a walk in nature and breathe deeply, notice the shoots coming up, the tree branches bursting into life with their soft buds, and the gorgeous spring flowers offering their blooms skyward—it’s guaranteed to lift the soul!
Yes, it’s easy to enjoy life in spring—just being able to sit outside or put on short sleeves and Capri pants or shorts and feel the sun on your skin, or kick off those heavy boots and shoes and slap on a pair of flip-flops or sandals (and ladies, show off those painted toenails) feels like such a treat.
I know what it is—it’s the anticipation of upcoming fun…of planning picnics…of running barefoot in the grass…of grilling on the barbecue without having that winter sting in the air…of brightly colored glassware and plates on the patio table…of lemonade and iced tea…of table centerpieces made with wild flowers…of freshly laundered clothes flapping on the line…of assembling hanging baskets of flowers for the porch…of splashing in puddles (while belting out the words to “Singing in the Rain”)…of running with a kite and seeing it fly up into the sky…of watching my children play (and now coach) soccer…and oh, that wonderful smell of fresh rain…
It’s a sense of freedom…of beauty…of hope.
Right now my office window is open just enough for that gentle breeze to enter (yet I’m protected from those bursts of gusty wind) and I hear the constant chatter of birds preparing to nest.
Robins are poking around in the ground.
Everything seems to be busy.
The dogwood tree and raspberry bushes are starting to bud.
The cherry tree and Japanese Maple are blooming.
The grass is greening.
What’s your favorite part of spring? Really, I’d like to know!
Don’t you just want to get outside and grab that taste of spring before it disappears!
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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“In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.”
~Kahlil Gibran
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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After your parent dies, you have an opportunity to think about your parent and yourself in a different light and resolve your relationship with them—an opportunity to come into your own, to grow into full adulthood and take responsibility for your own character and mature choices.
You are nobody’s child…and your parent can no longer share in your future joys.
Give yourself permission to change, to grow, to thrive, and to reconsider your parent and perhaps know them better through death—to accept their limitations (and yours).
Ask yourself:
“How did I feel about my mother/father?”
“How did they feel about me?”
“What did I learn from my mother/father?”
“Did I really know my mother/father?”
Consider how your mother/father was in the different roles s/he played: as a wife/husband, as a daughter/son, as a friend, and as a woman/man.
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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A physician by the first name of Cynthia (same name as my deceased sister), wrote, “When my father died, although he was beloved, we all experienced a lifting of the burden through which we all had been living. [He had multiple medical illnesses, a fractured hip, and dementia. We were very involved in his extensive medical care for the last years of his life, and he was in our home for the last weeks of his life, where he died.] Three years ago, my mother was diagnosed with cancer and we took care of her in our home for a year and a half until she died. Although I would have done nothing differently, and am glad we were able to care for her, her last months were difficult. She was angry at her diagnosis, angry at us, and alternatively loving and angry. The phrase ‘heavy blanket of misery’ is so apt. She died a year ago; I miss her so terribly, and feel so bad that I didn’t do more for her, but I still don’t know what more I could have done. The depression into which I slipped upon her diagnosis still sits on me daily like a heavy blanket of misery. Caring for my parents at home was one of the most difficult things I have ever done, and I still have not recovered.”
While getting increasingly exhausted, middle-aged men and women (like myself and Cynthia—baby-boomers we are called, although I’m amongst the youngest of that group) in growing numbers are watching a mother or father (or both) grow more helpless with each passing day—a transitioning from full independence to full dependence (sometimes astonishingly quickly) until the role reversal puts us squarely in charge of everything—juggling our parents’ increasing needs, frequent ER visits and medical emergencies (sometime several times a month or even every week), consults with lawyers perhaps to obtain committeeship papers or other legal advice and then dealing with the public trustee and other gov’t departments, dealing with the things that go wrong in even a good care-facility, the sense that no “good period” lasts for more than a few days and following through on all the other parts of our lives with our own family units (so that nobody, it seems, ever gets our full attention), and so and so on…
As another person wrote, “A health issue comes up for your parent and you have to drop everything and tend to it. Sometimes people don’t understand the strain or effort that goes into it all…and how taxing it can be on even the strongest and most stable marriage.”
Yes, when elderly parents decline, there are of lot of issues to deal with—the falls, the impacted bowels, the bedsores and rashes, the drugs that make your parent psychotic, the living will, the POA…and all the other issues around ourselves and within our own family unit.
Watching elderly parents adjust to unwelcome limitations and dependency is not a new issue but it is reaching more and more of us as we age—a lot of us are parenting our parent(s).
And caring for them and attending to their needs can be an exhausting commitment.
But in facing the decline and death of our parents we are also given the opportunity to face our own mortality…to have the chance to think about our future and set up a care plan for ourselves, ahead of time, and gather resources around ourselves in order help ease the burden on our children when WE start to ail and approach death.
Take the time to plan!
Why not start now!
Do you have an updated will? …A living will? … A designated POA? …
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow.
Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead.
Just walk beside me and be my friend.
~Albert Camus
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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One way to find out what is on the mind of your dying beloved is to have the person list what they would do if they had ten years to live; five years; one year; three months; or less.
“Are there any unfilled obligations to family members or friends you want to deal with?”
“Are there conversations you would like to have?”
“Are there messages you would wish to convey?”
“Are there any objects, feelings, or thoughts to share with others before you die?”
“Any personal desires from the past you would like to fulfill?”
“Is there a debt to repay?”
“Do you want to produce a writing or recording to leave for posterity?”
“Is there information about your own religious or moral beliefs to be shared with others?”
“How do you want people to treat you when you are close to death?”
“Is there anything you would specifically want done?”
“That you would not want done?”
“Are there any religious practices you would want observed?”
“Is there anything that is normally done which you do not want?”
“Is there anything you would specifically want done for people you love?”
…
Melanie Hack
Author of Who Killed My Sister, My friend
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