{"id":690,"date":"2010-04-09T16:40:29","date_gmt":"2010-04-10T00:40:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/?p=690"},"modified":"2010-04-09T16:40:29","modified_gmt":"2010-04-10T00:40:29","slug":"finding-hope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/?p=690","title":{"rendered":"Finding Hope"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many dying loved ones who come to fully accept they have an untreatable illness, which will cause their death, still find ways to maintain hope. <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

This can take the form of:<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Hoping to live to see a particular event (like the upcoming birth of a family member), <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Hoping to be released from the hospital or moved to another facility, <\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Hoping to achieve the resolution of a particular problem,<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Hoping to find a cure for their illness,<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

\u2026<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Many physicians and families, after discussing and agreeing on the futility of future therapy, still continue to go ahead with therapy knowing the risks far outweigh any potential physical benefit. The argument is that the therapy is appropriate as long as it does not present a significant risk to the patient and is not associated with significant suffering.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Hope is maintained.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Sometimes family members choose to keep knowledge of the terminal nature of the disease from a loved one because they do not want their beloved to be aware of the life expectancy\u2026they want to maintain hope.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve known people who have died quickly after being given bad news from family and physicians but I\u2019ve also seen people spurred on to \u201cfight like hell\u201d and outlive their life expectancy.<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Would you want to know if you had a terminal illness? Or would you want your family to keep such information from you?<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

What if you had Alzheimer\u2019s disease in your family (or another disease) and you could have a test to find out if you were likely to develop it as well, would you take the test?<\/o:p><\/span><\/p>\n

Melanie Hack<\/a>
\nAuthor of Who Killed My Sister, My friend<\/a>
\nRead an excerpt now<\/a>
\nTV Shows and Clips<\/a> about the Death of Cindy James<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many dying loved ones who come to fully accept they have an untreatable illness, which will cause their death, still find ways to maintain hope. This can take the form of: Hoping to live to see a particular event (like the upcoming birth of a family member), Hoping to be released from the hospital or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anticipated-death"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/melaniehack.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}