Joan Furman - The Dying Time: Practical Wisdom for the Dying & Their Caregivers

Early Praise for
THE DYING TIME

Written by a consummate nurse and a humane attorney, The Dying Time addresses the multitude of everyday questions, concerns, and fears that arise in the process of dying. Preparing for death is a final step in living a healthy life. Furman and McNabb explain the complexity of dying in a simple yet personal voice.

VIRGINIA TROTTER BETTS, M.S.N., J.D., R.N. ,
immediate past president, American Nurses Association

An enormously useful book for caregivers, hospice workers, and anyone who wants to understand the stages of the dying process. This is the clearest and most straightforward text I have read on the subject.

JOAN HALIFAX, PH.D. , founder of The Project of Being
with Dying

A manual of immediately practical assistance for humankinds most significantand often most frighteningmoment, death. Besides an enthusiastic response from all who want to handle their own and others deaths intelligently, this book deserves to be part of the core curricula in all schools of medicine and ministry. Already singular in its field, it seems inevitable that The Dying Time will become a classic.

GEORGE FOWLER , author of Dance of a Fallen Monk

This book is not intended as a substitute for the medical advice of physicians. Any application of the recommendations set forth in this book is at the readers discretion and sole risk. The reader should regularly consult a doctor in matters relating to health and particularly with respect to symptoms that may require diagnosis or medical attention. All names and identifying information have been changed to protect confidentiality of patients.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Institute of Noetic Sciences for the use of the poem The Last Resort from Lifes Finishing School by Helen Green Ansley. Copyright 1990 by the Institute of Noetic Sciences. Also to Prelude Press for two poems by Peter McWilliams from How to Survive the Loss of a Love by Melba Colgrove, Ph.D., Harold H. Bloomfield, M.D., and Peter McWilliams.

Copyright 1997 by Joan Furman and David McNabb
Reflexology chart copyright 1997 by Jeanette L. Golter

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by Bell Tower, an imprint of Harmony Books, a division of Crown
Publishers, Inc., 201 East 50th Street, New York, New York 10022.
Member of the Crown Publishing Group.
Random House, Inc. New York, Toronto, London, Sydney, Auckland
http://www.randomhouse.com/
Bell Tower and colophon are trademarks of Crown Publishers, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

eISBN: 978-0-307-79136-8

v3.1

Contents

Acknowledgments

Our heartfelt thanks to the patients and friends who have died and have been our greatest teachers.

We would like to express our gratitude to friends and colleagues who gave us the help we needed in writing this book: Nancy Telford, Vicki Slater, Ralph Cadenhead, David Cellon, and Jim Furman. And to the wizards of technology who enabled us to coauthor a book from opposite sides of the country.

We would also like to thank Toinette Lippe, our tireless and patient editor, as well as Lowenstein-Morel Associates, and Eileen Cope, our literary agents, for taking a chance with us. A special thanks to George Fowler, author and monk-at-large, who said, Maybe I can help. And to Kellogg Fellow Ray Gatchalian, who said, You need to write this book. Thanks to Drs. Richard Rose, Jeffry King, Ken Lichtenstein and nurse Kay Williams for their wisdom and care of the dying.

Finally we would like to acknowledge Dr. Elisabeth Kbler-Ross, who paved the road for all of us to be free to learn about healing in the dying time and to become midwives of the exit.

Preface

My lifes journey, my souls journey, has always been about healing. The word healing comes from the Anglo-Saxon haelen, meaning to make whole. For me, healing and dying are totally compatible concepts. To live and die consciously is to walk the healing path toward wholeness and to live through and accept dying as a part of life.

I always knew I would be a nurse, then later a nurse practitioner, but it wasnt clear to me that I would become a spiritual midwife. However, as a seventeen-year-old freshman nursing student, I attended my first of over one thousand deaths and soon thereafter my first of about two thousand births. During those early years, I lost countless friends in Vietnam, including a loved one, and by age twenty-three had survived my own near-death experience. I began to realize that I wanted to make death less frightening, mysterious, and out of control and more peaceful, loving, and safe for everyone in my care.

As a nurse practitioner, I still work with the dying. I have been fortunate to live my destiny and my purpose in healing the sick and dying, not by curing, but by caring. My hope is that some of the experiences that I describe in this book will help you find your own way of living through the dying time.

Dying and death, just like birthing and birth, are events of such beauty and awesome magnitude that I still cry at every one. The presence of Spirit in the room is palpable with the same intensity at birth or death. Each time I listen to the unseen, I sense great celebration in the room. The dying person often seems to be participating in that celebration, even though his body seems still in labor. I try to attend the death of every one of my clients. Like well-coached birthing, well-coached dying is a transcendent experience. The dying time can truly be a time of light and learning for all of us, although for most people it is a time of great fear.