The Five Stages Of Terminal Illness In Children

Getting prepared for death can be an exhausting experience for the patient and their family. It is very important that the patient not only knows what they want as far as their right to receive or reject treatment and medications or knowing whether they want to receive palliative care at home or in a hospital setting to include the advantages and disadvantages of each. The main focus of this paper is to give the reader an in depth look on how an end of life crisis affects a patient and their family. Ella is a breast cancer patient who just came out of remission and is at the end of her life.

To begin, there are many aspects of helping patients that are dealing with grief, loss, death, or dying. Whether the patient has lost someone that was close to them or they themselves are dying, the situation is quite fragile. Some important aspects that may help when handling these patients are knowledge about the different cultures and their beliefs and traditions, different factors that have an impact on grief, and how to communicate with people living on the edge of life. These are all extremely important matters when it comes to such a sensitive situation.

Death is inevitable. It is one of the only certainties in life. Regardless, people are often uncomfortable discussing death. Nyatanga (2016) posits that the idea of no longer existing increases anxiety and emotional distress in relation to one’s mortality. Because of the difficulty in level of care for end-of-life patients, the patient and the family often need professional assistance for physical and emotional care. Many family caregivers are not professionally trained in medicine, and this is where hospice comes into play. Hospice aims to meet the holistic needs of both the patient and the patient’s family through treatment plans, education, and advocacy. There is a duality of care to the treatment provided by hospice staff in that they do not attempt to separate the patient’s care from the family’s care. Leming and Dickinson (2011) support that hospice, unlike other clinical fields, focuses on the patient and the family together instead of seeing the patient independent of the family. Many times in hospitals, the medical team focuses solely on the goal of returning the patient back to health in order for them to return to their normal lives. They do not take into account the psychological and spiritual components of the patient’s journey and the journey that the family must take as well. For treatment of the patient, Leming and Dickinson agree that hospice does not attempt to cure patients, and instead concentrates solely

Life has many lessons in store for us. Often times, one of the most terrifying and traumatic lessons a child can learn really has nothing to do with life--but rather, death. Unfortunately, it is a lesson that we all must encounter at some point. No matter the age or circumstance, it is hard to understand how something so dark and mystical can impact our lives so much. It is even harder to cope with the loss of a loved one and to come to terms with knowledge that each day we live, we become one closer to dying.

The beginning of life is celebrated. Books and resources are shared among friends and family in preparation for becoming a new parent. So, what happens as one approaches the end of life? Unfortunately, the same care and sharing rarely occurs in those circumstances and many face the prospect of dying unprepared. Though most people state they would prefer to die at home, this is often not where death occurs. Many Americans spend their last days attached to medical apparatus that keeps the body alive, but it does not allow for communication with family and often requires heavy sedation. Additionally, this level of treatment comes at a high price. As a society, we must become as comfortable in addressing the end of life process as we

According to The Last Dance, a child gains all components of a mature concept of death between the ages of seven and ten. However, it is later noted that it is more reliable to take developmental sequence into consideration instead of age due to the fact that children develop at different rates. In order for a child to have a mature understanding of death, it is important for him or her to have experiences regarding

And the final stage is acceptance. In this stage it where people are ready to move on and preparing themselves to be without that person (C, n.d.-b). Or have calmness about them. Sometimes terminally ill people show acceptance by putting up a strong front through adversity. For example, Craig Sage who is a sideline reporter for the television network TNT has been diagnosed with leukemia cancer and has been given 3-6 months to live. He is determined to work despite his prognosis and fight to stay alive.

A 6-year-old girl was diagnosed with stage IV anaplastic Wilms’ tumor and had to undergo experimental chemotherapy, with less than a 5 percent chance of curing the deadly disease. Sadly, the personal account of this young child is highlighted in “Tell the Children” in the Journal of Clinical Oncology—written by Joanne Hilden, Jan Watterson, and Jody Chrastek, all from a hospital’s department of Hematology/Oncology. Not only does this young girl have to fight a relentless cancer, but she has to also go through this battle without understanding what she is dealing with. Hilden, Watterson, and Chrastek states that the parents were offered help in explaining to their daughter and her sister what may possibly happen: hospice (3193). Unfortunately, the parents’ response was, “We do not want the children told about this. Children should not have to deal with death. They should be free from that for as long as possible. We will answer what they ask, but we will not tell them what is happening or that our daughter is dying, and we do not want you to tell them, either” (3193). As a result of non-existent communication between the parent and the child, the young patient experienced a great deal of suffering and confusion. The parents declared that their child was comfortable; although, as time went on the child actually admitted to staff that she was, indeed, in pain (3193).

Provision of support to any individual in the life of the child is an important part of pediatric palliative care as it recognizes that many people are affected by the illness or death of the child. The team uses different approaches to offer support to the immediate and the extended family members. Some members are offered referrals to individual or family counseling while siblings receive pediatric therapies such as music, art and child life programs. Remembrance services are also offered (Martzo & Shermann, 2001). Parents are offered guidance and the appropriate resources as they struggle with how to communicate with their children concerning the illness. Apart from struggling with the right communication channel, parents have difficulties dealing with the complex medical systems that the child has to undergo. Through pediatric palliative care, the parents get extra help in dealing with the medical systems and the stress that is related with

It is believed that children do not experience grief until one has been through adolescents and can distinguish thoughts and feeling from emotions. According to Glass (1991), a child can grasp the notion of death during early childhood; and can begin to grief as early as six months (Willis, 2002). Willis (2002) believes from a moderate perspective that children begin to understand death and grieve approximately at three to four years old. Many times, small children are affected by loss and their grief is often underestimated. Children between the ages of three to five years old fall into stage one. During stage one; children view death as a going away from one place to another. It is believed that the deceased person has just relocated and is living in a new location. Stage two consists of children between the ages of five to nine years of old. In this phase, death can be fixed. It is thought that if one

Palliative Care for Children: Enhancing the Quality of Life for a Child with a Life-Threatening Illness

Nader and Salloum (2011) made clear that, at different ages, children differ in their understanding of the universality, inevitability, unpredictability, irreversibility, and causality of death. They believed, despite the increasing understanding with age of the physical aspects of death, a child may simultaneously hold more than one idea about the characteristics of death. However, factors that complete the determining nature of childhood grieving across different age groups may be a difficult task for a number of reasons including their environment in means of the support they have available, the child’s nature in terms of their personality, genetics, and gender, coping skills and previous experiences, the developmental age, grieving style, whether or not therapy was received, and the relationship to the deceased (Nader & Salloum, 2011). Crenshaw (2005) found that according to our current understanding of childhood traumatic grief and normal grief, thoughts and images of a traumatic nature are so terrifying, horrific, and anxiety provoking that they cause the child to avoid and shut out these thoughts and images that would be comforting reminders of the person who died. The distressing and intrusive images, reminders, and thoughts of the traumatic circumstances of the death, along with the physiological hyper-arousal associated with such re-experiencing, prevent the child from proceeding in a healthy way with the grieving process (Crenshaw, 2005). McClatchy, Vonk, and

Identifying the need for pediatric palliative care has been a challenge for medical practitioners. According to (William T. Basco, 2008) a study surveying physicians and nurses at one West Coast academic medical center in the United States showed that the most commonly reported barrier to optimal end-of-life care was uncertainty about the prognosis of the child, considered significant in 54.6% of the sample.

This article discusses the importance of death preparation of the dying person, as well as their family and caregivers. This article explains that communication is key to a healthy end of life experience. Communication can help reduce the financial burden of maintaining aggressive life-sustaining treatment in cases of imminent death. Also, lack of communication has been shown to impede patients to experience a so called “good death.” This article suggests that society is defensive when the subject of death preparedness is discussed; however, being prepared to accept death has a strong

Our society finds it difficult to talk about dying and euphemisms are the norm. It is typical for both doctors and patients to be hesitant to initiate a discussion on dying. Focus instead is often more often placed on interventions and actions for managing symptoms. This avoidance can leave patients and their families unprepared for the inevitable death. (Schapira, 2010) It also often results in requests for therapies which may be excessive, costly and even painful in the hopes for a cure. One study demonstrates that when patients are aware that they are terminally ill, the majority are able to reach a state of peacefulness and also exhibit lower levels of distress. (Ray, Block, Friedlander, Zhang, Maciejewski & Prigerson, 2006) It is also important that family members are willing to discuss end-of-life options with their loved ones. According to elderly patients, they are most often the ones who initiate these conversations with their