Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

some rough luck you might call it, so sooner or later this thing has to even out and that's going to be 
the day that I walk out of here and people won't even recognize me. 
 
DOCTOR: Is this what kept you from ever getting desperate? 
 
 
PATIENT: Nothing keeps you from ever getting desperate. I don't care how well adjusted you are, 
you will get desperate. But I will say this has kept me from the breaking point. You get desperate. 
You get to a place where you can't sleep and after a while you are fighting it. The harder you fight 
it, the harder it is on you, because it can actually get to be a physical battle. You will break out into 
a sweat just as though you are exerting yourself physically but it's all mental. 
 
DOCTOR: How do you fight it? Does religion help you? Or certain people help you? 
 
PATIENT: I don't call myself a particularly religious man. 
 
DOCTOR: What gives you the strength to do this for twenty years? It's just about twenty years isn't 
it? 
 
PATIENT: Well, yes, I guess your sources of strength come from so many different angles it would 
be pretty hard to say. My mother has a deep abiding faith. Any effort that I give this thing less than 
my full effort, I would feel that I am letting 
 
her down. So I say with the help of my mother. My wife has a deep abiding faith, so it is also with 
the help of my wife. My sisters, it always seems to be the females in the family who have the 
deeper religion, and they are the ones who are, I guess, the most sincere in their prayers. To me, the 
average person praying is begging for something. Always had too much pride to actually beg. I 
think maybe that's why I can't put all the full feeling into what I say here. I can't give vent to all my 
feelings along those lines, I guess. 
 
DOCTOR: What did you have as a religious background, Catholic or Protestant ... ? 
 
PATIENT: I'm a Catholic now, I was converted Catholic. One of my parents was Baptist and one 
was Methodist. They made it fine. 
 
DOCTOR: How did you become a Catholic? 
 
PATIENT: It seemed to fit into my idea of what a religion should be. 
 
DOCTOR: When did you make that change? 
 
PATIENT: When the kids were small. They went to Catholic schools. In the early '50's I figure. 
 
DOCTOR: Was this in any way connected with your illness? 
 
PATIENT: No, because at the time the skin didn't bother me too much and I just thought that as 
soon as I get a chance to settle down and go to a doctor this will be cleared up, you know? 

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DOCTOR: Ah 
 
PATIENT: But it never happened like that. 
 
DOCTOR: Is your wife Catholic? 
 
PATIENT: Yes, she is. She was converted at the time I was. 
 
DOCTOR: Yesterday you told me something. I don't know if you want to bring it up again. I think 
it would be helpful. When I asked you how you take all this, you gave me the whole scale of 
possibilities of how a man can become-ending it all and thinking about suicide, and why this is not 
possible for you. You mentioned also a fatalistic approach, can you repeat that again? 
 
PATIENT: Well, I said that I had a doctor once who told me, "I couldn't, I don't know how you 
take it. I'd kill myself." 
 
DOCTOR: That was a doctor who said that? 
 
(P134) 
 
PATIENT: Yes. So then I said, killing myself is out because I'm too yellow to kill myself. That 
eliminates one possibility that I don't have to think about. I finally rid my mind of encumbrances as 
I go on, so that I have less and less and less to think about. So I eliminated the idea of killing 
myself by the process of eliminating death. Then I reached the conclusion that, well, you're here 
now. Now you can either turn your face to the wall or you can cry. Or you can try to get whatever 
little fun and pleasure out of life you can, considering your condition. And certain things happen. 
You may watch a good TV program or listen to interesting conversation and after a few minutes 
you are not aware of the itching and the uncomfortable feeling. All these little things I call bonuses 
and I figure that if I can have enough bonuses together one of these days everything will be a bonus 
and it will stretch out to infinity and every day will be a good day. So I don't worry too much. 
When I have my miserable feelings I just more or less distract myself or try to sleep. Because after 
all, sleep is the best medicine that has ever been invented. Sometimes I don't even sleep, and I just 
lie there quietly. You learn how to take these things, what else can you do? You jump up and 
scream and holler and you can beat your head against the wall, but when you do all that you're still 
itching, you're still miserable. 
 
DOCTOR: It's the itching that seems to be the worst part of your illness. Do you have any pain? 
 
PATIENT: So far the itching has been the worst, but right along the bottom of my feet it is so sore 
that it's like torture to put any weight on them. So I'd say up to now the itching, and the dryness and 
the scaliness has been my biggest problem. I have a personal warfare on these scales. It gets to be a 
funny thing. You get your bed full of scales and you make a brush like that, and ordinarily any kind 
of debris just sails right off. The scales jump up and down in one place like they have claws and it 
gets to be a frantic effort. 
 
DOCTOR: To get rid of them? 

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PATIENT: To get rid of them, because they will fight you to a standstill. You'll be exhausted and 
you'll look and they are still there. So I even thought about a small vacuum cleaner, to keep myself 
clean. Staying clean gets to be an obsession with you because by the time you take a bath and put 
all this goo on you, you don't feel clean anyway. So right away you feel like you need another bath. 
You could spend your life going in and out of the bath. 
 
DOCTOR: Who is most helpful in this trouble? As long as you are in the hospital, Mr. J? 
 
PATIENT: Who is the most helpful? I'd say you couldn't meet anybody around here, everybody, 
they anticipate my needs and help. They do a lot of things I don't even think about. One of the girls 
noticed that my fingers were sore and I was having trouble lighting a cigarette. I heard her tell the 
rest of the girls, "When you come through here you check with him and see if he wants a cigarette." 
Why, you can't beat that. 
 
DOCTOR: They really care. 
 
PATIENT: You know, it's a wonderful feeling but everywhere I have been and all through my life, 
people have liked me. I am profoundly thankful for that. I am humbly thankful. I have never gone 
out of my way, I don't think, to be a do-gooder. But I can find any number of people in this city 
who could point out times on various jobs that I helped them out. I don't even know why, it was 
just a part of me to put a person mentally at ease. I would go to the effort to help this person adjust 
himself. And I can find so many people and they tell other people how I helped them. But by the 
same token everybody I have ever known has helped me. I don't believe I have an enemy in the 
world. I don't believe I know a person in the world who wishes me any kind of harm. My roommate 
from college was here a couple of years ago. We talked about the days we were in school together. 
We remembered the dormitory when at any hour of the day someone would make a suggestion, 
let's go down and turn out so-and-so's room. And they would come down and throw you out bodily, 
out of your own room. Good clean horseplay, rough, but good fun. And he was telling his son how 
we used to stand them off and stack them up like cord wood. We were both strong we were both 
the tough type. And we would actually stack them up in that hall, they never turned our room out. 
We had one roommate 
 
(P136) 
 
in there with us and he was on the track team and he ran the hundred-yard dash. Before five guys 
came in the door he could get out of that door and down that hall, was about seventy yards long. 
Nobody could have had him once he got started. So way late he would come back, we would have 
order restored and the room cleaned up and everything, and we'd all go to bed. 
 
DOCTOR: Is this one of the bonuses you think about? 
 
PATIENT: I look back on it and I think of the foolish things we did. Some guys came up one night 
and the room was cold. We wondered who could stand the most cold and naturally each one of us 
knew we could stand the most cold. So we decided to raise the window. No heat coming up or 
anything and it was seventeen below zero outside. I remember I had one of those woolen skullcaps 
on and two pair of pyjamas and a robe and two pair of socks. I guess everybody else did the same 

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