Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

DOCTOR: Do you think it would help if we would talk with her a little bit about it, or would it be 
too much for her? 
 
PATIENT: Oh, I don't think it would hurt a bit. She is a Christian, she knows the lord is her 
Saviour and has ever since she was a child. In fact she had a healing, as a child, of an eye. The 
specialists were ready to send her to the hospital in St. Louis to have an eye removed because of an 
ulcer on the eye. She received a miraculous cure and in this cure she brought other individuals, one 
a physician, to a knowledge of the Lord. She is a strong Methodist woman anyway, but this was the 
solidifying element. She was about ten years old, but the experience itself with this physician was 
the solidifying element in her life. 
 
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DOCTOR: Before you had this illness, in your younger days, did you have any big stress or 
something very sad happen to you? So that you could compare how you took it then compared to 
how you take this now. 
 
PATIENT: No, I have often looked at myself and wondered how I've been able to do this. I know it 
has only been through the support of the Lord. Because I've never bad any deep stress other than 
danger that affected me at all. And of course I was a combat man during World War II. This was 
my first stress and the first time in my life that I actually faced, knew that I was facing death if I did 
such and such a thing. 
 
DOCTOR: I think we have to finish, maybe we can drop in once in a while. 
 
PATIENT: I appreciate it. 
 
DOCTOR: Thank you very much for coming. PATIENT: I've enjoyed coming. 
 
Mrs. G., Dr. G.'s wife, came visiting as we were taking the patient down the hall for the interview. 
The chaplain, who knew her from previous visits, explained to her briefly what we were in the 
process of doing. She expressed interest in it and we invited her to join us later on. While the 
interview with her husband was in progress, she waited in the adjoining room and was asked to 
come in as her husband was returned to his room. She thus had little time for reflection or second 
thoughts. (We usually attempt to allow enough time between request and actual interview in order 
to give the interviewee a truly free choice.) 
 
DOCTOR: This takes you kind of by surprise to come and visit your husband and then come to an 
interview like this. Have you spoken with the chaplain of what this is all about? 
 
MRS. c: Sort of. 
 
DOCTOR: How did you deal with the awareness of your husband's quite unexpected and serious 
illness? 
 
MRS. c: Well, I might say I was shook up at first. 
 

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DOCTOR: He was a healthy man until that summer? MRS. c: Yes, that's right. 
 
DOCTOR: Never very ill or complaining, nothing? MRS. c: Yes. Just complaining of a few pains. 
 
DOCTOR: And then? 
 
MRS. c: We doctored and someone suggested X-rays. And then we had the surgery done. And 
really it wasn't until then that I was real aware of the fact that it was real serious. 
 
DOCTOR: Who told you and how did they tell you? 
 
MRS. c: Our physician is a very close friend of ours. Well, before he entered into surgery he called 
me and told me, now this possibly could be a malignancy. And I said, "Oh, no." He said, "Yes, so 
I'm just warning you." So I was a little prepared but to the extent when I was told that it was more 
serious this just didn't click with me that we had bad news. "We didn't get it all," the doctor said. 
That was the first thing I remember. Well, I was really shook up because I thought, well now, it 
couldn't have been going on very long. One of the physicians said that he had only about three to 
four months and, how soon can you catch these things? So, the first thing I did is I prayed about it. 
While he was in surgery I prayed. I prayed a very selfish prayer, that this would not be malignant. 
Of course, the way the human being is this way. You want it to be your way. Until I put it in God's 
will I didn't have the peace that I really should. Of course the day of the surgery was bad anyhow, 
and that long night was terrible. In the night I really found a peace that really gave me courage. I 
found many passages in the Bible that gave me strength. We have a family altar in our home. I 
might say, just before this happened we memorized a Scripture and we repeat it and repeat it. It's 
found in Isaiah 33: 3 and it says, "Call unto me, I will answer thee and show thee great and mighty 
things that thou knowest not," and we all memorized that. 
 
DOCTOR: That was before the awareness of this illness? 
 
MRS. c: Just about two weeks before. And you know that came right to me and I kept repeating 
that. And then I had so many things in the book of John that came to me. If you ask anything in my 
name I will do it. And I wanted God's will, but it was only through this that I found myself. I could 
go on because we have been very devoted and we just had the one boy. My boy had been away to 
college. College kids are occupied with so many things, but he came in, he came right along with 
me and we literally searched the Scriptures for 
 
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help. He made such nice prayers along with me, and then the people of our church were very, very 
nice. They would come in and have different passages in the Bible to read. I've read them many 
many times but they never meant what they did to me now. 
 
CHAPLAIN: At this point they seemed to pick up and almost verbalize your feelings. a MRS. c: 
Every time I opened the Bible there would be something just standing there, just like it was 
speaking forth to me. I got to the point where I just thought, well, now maybe there will be some 
good out of this. That's just the way I would take it and I found daily strength to meet it. My 
husband had a great faith and when he was told all about his condition he said to me, "What would 

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