Die Laughing

There’s a legend that an older man on his death bed passed away because his poor family couldn’t remember his blood type. “We kept asking him, but dad kept insisting that we “be positive.”  Attitudes about death have changed over the years as we can live much longer and as our healthcare has improved. Some believe you can come back from death – heck, Johnny Cammareri’s mom “recovered from death” of all things in the famous movie Moonstruck. Many of us have had to deal with death early in life and this has shaped how we live. In fact many younger people say the loss of a parent to an unhealthy lifestyle has led them to be more active, while older people who lose a spouse are more apt to “take on their life partners” habits and behaviors. Heck, my own mother-in-law acknowledges that in the years following Arnie’s passing. “I don’t understand why I drink Bud Lights, polish my shoes and play solitaire – I never did these things before.”  For several years after Arnie died, Ellen would watch the Red Sox on the TV but she’d put the volume down to zero and turn up the AM radio to hear Joe Castiglione call the game. Arnie did that. Ellen suffers from the effects of vascular dementia, one of the most underdiagnosed conditions in the US. It is as disabling as a leg break in that it takes the mind away and leaves only fragments of information, but no tools to piece those fragments together. This is a difficult disease to watch because it’s a slow path toward death but I do believe we can laugh along the way. Ellen, like many seniors, may not have the capacity to remember the last 10 seconds, but she can “experience”.  Others facing disease don’t necessarily hold a different view of death than everyone else, largely because their attitudes were essentially shaped by previous stages of their sickness, according to an interesting 2013 study on “Attitudes Toward Death In Healthy People vs. Those Living With Diabetes & Cancer.” Grief itself following death or in the period before it has a big cost. The Grief Recovery Institute found that employers lost about $75 Billion annually back in 2003 due to grieving related effects.  That number is now well over $125 billion according some estimates.  For those in healthcare, death and grieving are unavoidable but they are also part of the great mission. Can you help bend the curve for people early enough to give them another year or two of quality life, or help caregivers have a year or two more with someone they love?