A recent movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman tells the story of two men who have been diagnosed with cancer and been given a year or less to live. They create a list of things they want to do before they “kick the bucket.”
For the premise of the movie to work, the cancer patients have to have a doctor who is willing to be honest and tell his patients that they have a terminal illness and a limited time to live. Interestingly, research shows that most cancer doctors avoid telling their patients that the end is near. Only one third of doctors discussed end-of-life care with their patients, while two-thirds avoided the discussion.
The patients who knew they were nearing the end of their lives spent less time in the hospital during their final days and their loved ones were more at peace after they died.
Doctors seem to mistakenly believe that talking about death will make you die quicker. Yet patients crave these conversations because they want to know what they are up against. Without honest conversations about the end-of-life, patients feel abandoned because they have to face death alone because no one will discuss it.
Based on this research, it is apparent that talking about death has benefits for patients with cancer. There may be benefits for the rest of us as well. None of us know how long we are going to live. We all of the gift of only today. If we all acknowledged today is the only day we know we have, how would it change our day . . . our hours . . . our minutes?
We might all need to pay a little more attention to our “bucket list”.
I agree with you and would want to make the most of my time left. I would also want to leave with no regrets.
I would appreciate our linking to each other’s websites if that’s ok with you!
Donna
It was so interesting story I am a Teacher of 3 grade in a private school in Kosova and I thing like you dear Dr.Beth we must thing about these children with these problems in their house we must help them in any way they need, I hope you understand my English language .
Key of a positive world and our future is NOT stop thinking of problems any problems of children in world because is not like you work with happy and loved child and from permisive family like you work with children with represive family , we must help them so early not to be late for them they are most important thing in this world but we must not just think but we must do that what is the best for them in practice , to be their live more easy and not so hard because how we educate them like infant or from prenatal periode they will be like these a factor in their social life and will grow their family in that atmosphere with a positive or negative influence in this wonderful world .
But I see that we make them like a robot and not like a human been we work, we dont have time for them to love to learn them how to live their life so lovely WE WORK ALL DAY but we dont think never for whom we do that money and everything for our robots , or for our lovely child …………………