I meet with one of my clients and his wife twice a week every week. Sometimes we talk about the Chiefs, sometimes we talk about completely random things. Something that he didn’t love talking about first, but is okay talking about now, is death. No one ever loves when I bring up death, but we’ve had a lot of conversations about it.
Recently, my client and his wife have had a lot of conversations about it. So many times we have a hard time talking about these things, even though they are on our minds. It’s often things like death that we have a hard time talking about out loud until it’s too late.
My patient has vascular dementia and can feel himself slipping at times. We’ve had a lot of really tough conversations that have helped us know what’s important to him while he still has his voice. Once he doesn’t have a voice anymore, it will be his wife who is making all of the thousands of decisions about how care is going moving forward.
When we don’t have the tough conversations and someone loses their ability to speak, I have observed that the caregiver or significant other always experience some level of guilt and asks themselves ‘Did I do the right thing?’ and ‘Did I make the right decision?’
I have these awkward conversations before so that it helps loved ones not feel guilty and find peace. We let their words speak for them before they lose their voice so that good we can make sure people are dying and living the way they want.
We also want to make sure that there isn’t a burden passed on to their loved ones. At that point, these family members have already carried so much that they shouldn’t have to carry one more burden – it’s like adding insult to injury.
After we starting having the tough conversations, I helped them get to a point where they look forward to holding deep conversations. Now, my client has some peace knowing that things will go a certain way when he can’t tell us which way to go.
-Ryan
