"Dear Life"

I just finished reading "Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love & Loss" by Rachel Clarke.  Actually this is the second time I have read it in 8 months. The first time I read it was because empathy, compassion and end of life is a topic I am drawn to. The second time I read it was because empathy, compassion and end of life was something I was experiencing in my own life. 

Dr. Clarke is a Doctor specializing in Palliative Medicine.  She chose this area to specialize in after serving for many years in the hospital system.  She witnessed a need, a need that she could fill. It was also in this area that she found her calling and life's mission. 

I would like to share a few quotes from her book.  The first is her answer to the question about how she could do this (care for the terminally ill) every single day. So many people said to her 'don't you find it depressing?'  Her response; "....nothing could be further from the truth.  All that is good in human nature - courage, compassion, our capacity to love - is here in it's most distilled form.  So often, so reliably, I witness people rising to their best, upon facing the worst.  I am surrounded by human beings at their finest."

And this: "What dominates Palliative medicine is not the proximity to death, but the best bits of living.  Kindness, courage, love, tenderness - these are the qualities that so often saturate a person's last days"

These quotes, her experiences, her wisdom and compassion is exactly why I read this book. Twice.  Dr. Clarke is honest and straightforward about the failings of our medical field. "We make paradoxical demands on our doctors.  We want them human, empathetic and caring, but only up to a point.  We also want the detachment that enables them to swoop to a crisis and crack on undeterred all instincts to recoil suppressed."

And this; "If in striving for longer and better living, doctors end up merely prolonging your painful demise, then medicine has surely lost its way."

End of life. This is not an easy topic to think about and acknowledge.  And it's not a talk we want to have with those we love, but it is so important.  So many times Doctors will steer terminally ill patients to choose "life saving" measures which unfortunately, in the end, greatly diminish their quality of life.  If you have these conversations beforehand, and your wishes are known, then you choose life, and death, on your own terms. 

The question Dr. Clarke asks, the question that we should all ask ourselves and those we love is this:  "What are your tradeoff's? What are you willing to do to ensure that your life, your remaining life, is comfortable and peaceful". 

The answer will be yours and it will be different for every single person.  But it's your life.  In this situation, you have every right to decide, on your terms, how to end this life and begin your new one. 💗