Coronaviruses prey on things that scare us: die alone

“Honestly, I think he died alone,” said Bad Kaminsky, one of Steve’s sons. “Even if there was a doctor.”

As the coronavirus creepes on to victims around the world, one of its scariest aspects is that it feeds our deepest fears and appears to prey on our instinct.

Ironically, what we need at the moment of fear and anxiety can kill us.

Many hospitals and nursing homes have closed doors and placed covid-19 patients in isolation wards to prevent the spread of the disease. One physician called it a “medical version of a lonely confinement.”

The priest manages the last ceremony over the phone while the family sits helplessly at home.

Isolation extends beyond coronavirus patients. Amy Tucci, president of the American Hospice Foundation, estimates that 40% of hospice patients are in hospitals and nursing homes, many of which impose strict restrictions on visitors. Their families are also worried that their loved ones will die without a family.

“We are eager for closure,” said Maryland psychologist Dr. Christine Bianchi, “it’s no surprise that we want to be there in the last moment of the one we love. I want to witness the process and say goodbye. ”

“Lonely death” bothers us

Something seems to bother us about dying alone. For some, it may indicate that love and value were lacking in the life of the deceased, and they were eventually forgotten.

However, some health professionals now dispute the idea that a number of people have died without a companion in the hospital. They said that hospital staff was often alert at the patient’s bedside at the last minute.

They say it is not ideal, but they are not the lonely deaths we might imagine.

As a pulmonologist and a member of the Optimum Care Committee at Massachusetts General Hospital, Emily Rubin is at the forefront of the pandemic.

But Rubin said the situation was evolving rapidly as the virus spread. In some cases, hospitals may connect families and victims of covid-19 electronically rather than directly. Nurses and other hospital staff may also be on alert.

“Even if the disease is too strong, the ethics of not abandoning people is very strong,” Rubin said. “We feel that being with people at the end of life is a big part of our work.

“The people in the hospital are not dead alone.”

Still, Rubin admitted that shepherding patients at the end of life could put a strain on doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff.

“The catastrophic image of the lonely death of a coronavirus patient in Italy depends on us all,” Lamas wrote. “When I talked to one of our hospital’s new Covid-19 I.C.U.Nurse practitioners one recent night, she asked what she was most concerned about.

However, some pastors of hospice cast doubt on the concept of “lonely death,” and state in their experience that some would like to end themselves.

“I don’t think it’s always bad to die alone,” said Rev. C. Brandon Brewer, Pastor Hospice of Maryland. “What we did was make it unnecessary to do so.”

Get rid of end-of-life rituals

When thinking about dying alone, psychologists say we are really talking about two separate things.

“It creates a sense of fear for almost everyone,” said Bianchi, an anxiety and behavior change center in Rockville, Maryland. “We want to be able to buffer the experience from what we believe to be a painful and difficult experience. I want to go there because I imagine myself in that scenario.”

“People are feeling guilty. How could they do better, how could they stop this,” she said. “Part of that is just part of the normal grief process.”

This constant pandemic results in a surprisingly fast death and heightens anxiety. Many people cannot whisper the last goodbye or go to the bedside of a loved one to relieve old grudges.

Secular and religious end-of-life rituals have also been removed. Hospice care etc.

“Hospice is about enabling people to look back on their lives, kiss each other hand in hand, and say sorry to say goodbye, and provide an environment where they can kiss each other. The Hospice Foundation. “It’s a nightmare.”

At the same time, many funeral homes have greatly reduced the monuments, burials, and other rituals used to commemorate deceased friends and family.

“Even when there is someone to support us at the memorial, it can be a very isolated experience,” Bianchi said. “Taking it and forcing someone into isolation as it is now can be absolutely painful.”

Dying alone is different from lonely death

Rev. Hospice says it happens too often by chance.

Families spend hours and days near the dead bed of their loved ones, and stay alert. And when they leave for a while to make a sandwich or take a shower, their loved ones die.

“There is no coincidence in my mind,” said Brewer, Pastor of Hospice in Maryland. “This is an intentional process.”

Eagan agreed. “Ask people who have worked in hospice. They have a lot of these stories.” Many people want to die alone. ”

In other words, there is a difference between dying alone and lonely.

“Dying alone does not necessarily mean dying without love; it is, in some cases, simply the absence of others in the room,” said Brewer. “And if that’s what someone wants, it’s okay. That doesn’t mean they were abandoned.”

In a sense, Egan added, even when surrounded by loved ones. Often, when we die, our bodies are broken and our hearts are elsewhere. The conscious experience of death is lonely in nature.

And, surrounded by a faithful family, deep on the deathbed? What is the picture of someone in the movie telling the last word? A hospice pastor said it was a pleasant fiction.

“That’s not the way it happens,” Egan said. “Many people do not respond at the end. Their bodies are busy doing something else.”

This family said goodbye on the phone

Before Steve Kaminski passed away, he was a mountain nurse. Sinai has set up a group call so that the last voice of the family can be heard.

His face lightened, and the nurse told the family that each had offered tears or told him that he would meet him when he left the hospital without expecting hope.

Kaminsky himself couldn’t say anything with the ventilator.

Steve’s son, Bart Kaminski, was the end of a vibrant life of 86 years, a sudden and surprising end when he passed away a few days later.

But Bad Kaminsky said he took some comfort from the dinner he had recently shared with his father and his father’s longtime partner. They went to a Vietnamese restaurant, emptied a bottle of Merlot and then ate ice cream. Bart remembers that his father was a lively self like a regular Bonn.

“People should not take the time to connect with them, especially older families, as a matter of course,” Kaminsky said.

“This happens suddenly. There are no visitors. There is no last word.”