The Last Dance

 Encountering Death and Dying by Lynne Ann DeSpelder is an interdisciplinary prologue to death, dying, and mourning. It encompasses the sensory and pedagogical, as well as the social, individual, emotional, and intellectual dimensions of death and dying. The seventh chapter of this book focuses on how an individual lives with a life-threatening illness, providing consideration for the mental and social ramifications of such disorders.

The chapter documents the agent’s individual and social implications of a life-threatening sickness, such as anxiety and fear about the anguish and passing on social humiliation, the cost of medical care, missed profit, and a showdown with mortality. DeSpelder depicts and evaluates the examples that should have been followed keeping in mind the end goal to adapt to the life-threatening illness (DeSpelder and Albert 259). For example, with regards to this, the dying person becomes plainly uninformed of him or her approaching death despite the fact that others may know. This might be due to absence to correspondence about the individual’s disease or the possibility of his or her demise.

At the point when the life-threatening disease is made to appear to be forbidden, it makes troubles in correspondence and hampers social support. The context of mutual pretense outlines that people should be aware of a patient’s condition or prognosis as likely to be terminal (DeSpelder and Albert 260). However, they should avoid direct communication among themselves as well as to the patient, about this prognosis and instead act to sustain the illusion that the patient is getting well. This is also known as conspiracy of silence. Other awareness contexts include open awareness and suspected awareness (DeSpelder and Albert 260). In suspected awareness context, an individual would suspect that he or she may die as a result of his or her illness, but this suspicion is not confirmed by those who know the truth. On the flip side, open awareness context acknowledges and openly discusses the prospect of an individual dying as a result of his or her terminal illness.

A life-threatening illness is frequently costly considering individual, social and profound viewpoints. The reaction to ailment is formed by identity, family examples, and social condition (DeSpelder and Albert 263). The response to illness is shaped by personality, family patterns, and social environment. There are four essential procedures that are utilized as a part of adapting to life-threatening illness. They incorporate the physical, mental, social, and spiritual measurements. These measurements are portrayed as far as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ spearheading stage-based approach including denial, outrage, dealing, wretchedness, and acknowledgment are concerned (DeSpelder and Albert 265). She additionally utilizes other late methodologies, for example task-oriented, phase-oriented, and pattern-oriented methodologies.

Kübler uses a task model which confronts the problem of the life-threatening illness and revises an individual’s plan necessary in keeping open communication. The individual can use the help offered by others (DeSpelder and Albert 267). This approach helps in the maintenance and optimization of a sense of hope to the patient. In addition, she describes the use of phase-oriented approaches in coping with a life-threatening illness such as pre-diagnostic, acute, chronic, terminal and recovery phases.

In pre-diagnostic phase, an individual would suspect the presence of a disease and thus go to seek medical attention. The pre-diagnostic phase is the acute phase where an individual understands the disease and strives to maximize his or her health and lifestyle through developing strategies to deal with the problems that face him or her as an outcome of the disease (DeSpelder and Albert 268). The acute phase expresses feelings and fears as it integrates reality into the past and the future. In the chronic phase, an individual is able to manage the symptoms and side effects of the disease as he or she maximizes on the social support and self-concept preservation. This phase tries to make life normal as it makes it possible to manage stress (DeSpelder and Albert 269). The terminal phase helps in the management of symptoms such as discomfort, pain, and incapacitation among others, and also in the preparation of death as one maintains an appropriate relationship with others. This helps the patient to express his or her feeling without fear as he or she finds meaning in life and death. The recovery phase brings hope to the patient because it would apply when a cure to the life-threatening disease is found.

Keeping up the feeling of self-value by setting objectives and endeavoring to meet them notwithstanding life-threatening illness obliges access to both inward and outside assets. The alternatives for treatment of genuine disease change as indicated by the sickness and continuous advancements in restorative learning. Withholding or suspending treatment may likewise be a choice.

Alternative treatments incorporate adjunctive or integral treatments, and additionally, irregular treatments. Pain management is a fundamental segment of a far-reaching treatment plan. Studies of the diminishing direction recognize two principle sorts: awaiting direction whereby passing happens steadily and over an augmented timeframe, and, a speedy direction whereby demise is the result of an intense restorative emergency (DeSpelder and Albert 272). The social role of a dying patient contrasts between social gatherings and among people and families. Being with somebody who is passing on is frequently a valuable and cozy experience.

In conclusion, Lynne Ann DeSpelder expresses an interdisciplinary in, dying, and bereavement of a patient who dies of a life-threatening illness. She integrates the experience that accompanies the social, individual, enthusiastic and scholarly measurements of death and dying.

Works Cited

DeSpelder, Lynne Ann, and Albert Lee Strickland. The last dance: Encountering death and dying. Mayfield Publishing Co, 1996.