Erykah Badu Quotes

In the last stages of a final illness, we need only the absence of pain and the presence of family.

It seems sensible to me that we should look to the medical profession, that over the centuries has helped us to live longer and healthier lives, to help us die peacefully among our loved ones in our own home without a long stay in God's waiting room.

Hospice has brought such a light in my life. It is something I will be involved with until I need hospice myself.

Unless they've had some experience with it, the hospice is still a mystery to most people. Because hospice deals with death, people tend not to talk about it.

Bodily discomfort and emotional fear and attachment make the dying uncomfortable and fearful. So, to help those dying people, I think modern medical science has a lot of facilities to reduce pain, or perhaps not to reduce pain, but not to experience pain.

I say to people who care for people who are dying, if you really love that person and want to help them, be with them when their end comes close. Sit with them - you don't even have to talk. You don't have to do anything but really be there with them.

The end of life is likely to be an important focus for innovation. Most people die in hospitals, tied up with tubes and with their bodies pumped full of drugs. Yet most would rather die at home and with more control over the timing and manner of their death.

Hospice means end-of-life care. The admission ticket is a diagnosis from a doctor that you have six months or less to live.

We could keep his body going, but it was trying its hardest to die.

I've been there for a couple of people when they were dying; it didn't look like fun. But if I was gonna do it, I'd want someone like me around. And I will be there!

For months before he passed, my dad would have terrible night sweats, and soak through his sheets, often several times a night. Each time, mom would gently roll him over, replace the sheets, and roll him back - then spend the whole next day washing several sets of sheets, only to repeat the routine each night.

My husband Don's mother, Denise, was diagnosed with cancer, and she was given eight months to live. We decided to go and stay there and help live her days with her, 'cause you don't get those chances again, right?

Most death now happens in hospitals. It's been medicalized. It happens away from where we deal with it directly. And that's a huge change. At the beginning of the 20th century most people died at home. Death was much more common.

The definition of what it means to be dying has changed radically. We are able to extend people's lives considerably, including sometimes, good days.

My dad's dying wish was to have his family around him. I can't help thinking he would have been better off with more oxygen.

Whereas a prolonged life is not necessarily better, a prolonged death is necessarily worse.

Hospice is such a tremendous thing. Patients seem to reach an inner peace.

My father was in terrible pain towards the end because of his bed sores, and he did go into hospice, and I think that was better in some ways. You know, I think his death was peaceful, and it was all right. He was just in terrible pain.

I don't want a few extra weeks of life at enormous cost, for example, when it comes to the end.

I have learned that delivering the best possible palliative care to children is vital, providing children and their families with a place of support, care and enhancement at a time of great need is simply life-changing.

Having been an oncologist and having cared for scores, if not hundreds, of dying patients, when you don't have a treatment that can shrink the tumor and the patient will die, it's a very difficult conversation. It's emotionally draining.

I accept the dying process. I would just like to be as healthy as I possibly can at each step and phase along the way.

In working with those who are dying, I offer another human being a spacious environment with my mind in which they can die as they need to die. I have no right to define how another person should die. I'm just there to help them transition, however they need to do it.

Dying in the sanitary environment of a hospital is a relatively new concept. In the late 19th century, dying at a hospital was reserved for people who had nothing and no one. Given the choice, a person wanted to die at home in their bed, surrounded by friends and family.

We have an idea - a very modern idea - that dying is undignified. But I think this is because we have the illusion that we can control our bodies and our fates.