Microsoft Word Elisabeth Kubler-Ross On Death And Dying doc

DOCTOR: Not at all. You were well, you were a healthy man until when? 
 
PATIENT: Until I went into the hospital. 
 
DOCTOR: And why did you go into the hospital? 
 
PATIENT: Well, merely to have him look at it because I was having such constipation and diarrhea 
alternating. 
 
DOCTOR: Um hm. What you are really saying is that you were unprepared. 
 
PATIENT: Entirely. Not only that but they sent me over to the hospital within a couple of hours of 
the time I arrived in his office and within a week or so he operated. 
 
DOCTOR: So there was a sense of urgency. And then they did the colostomy or what? 
 
PATIENT: Yes. 
 
DOCTOR: Yes, and that's difficult to take too, isn't it? 
 
PATIENT: Hm? 
 
DOCTOR: That is difficult to take. 
 
PATIENT: Oh, no, the colostomy is easy. 
 
DOCTOR: Is easy to take? 
 
PATIENT: It was the idea that was only part of it; in other words the colostomy supposedly reveals 
all sorts of other things, but the things they revealed apparently weren't right. 
 
DOCTOR: How everything becomes relative. Hm, I thought the colostomy caused pain to endure 
but when it is a question of 
 
(P82) 
 
life and death then the colostomy is the smallest of the bad things. 
 
PATIENT: Sure, that would be nothing if the person is going to live. 
 
DOCTOR: Yes. After you had this news you must have been thinking about how Is going to be 
when you die. How long are you going to live. How does a man like you deal with those questions? 
 
PATIENT: Ah-actually I had had so many personal griefs in the meantime in my own life that it 
didn't seem like much. That's about it. 
 
DOCTOR: Really? 

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CHAPLAIN: Personal griefs? 
 
PATIENT: A series of them over a period of time. 
 
CHAPLAIN: Do you feel like talking about it? 
 
PATIENT: Oh yes, that's all right. 
 
DOCTOR: Does that mean that you had a lot of personal losses? 
 
PATIENT: Yes, my father and my mother died, brother died, a twenty-eight-year-old daughter died, 
leaving two small children which we cook care of for three years, up until last December. And that 
was the worst blow of all because it was a constant reminder of her death. 
 
CHAPLAIN: The children in the house. What did she die of? 
 
PATIENT: She died of rigorous climate in Persia. 
 
CHAPLAIN: While she was overseas? 
 
PATIENT: A hundred and twenty degrees in the shade most of the year. 
 
CHAPLAIN: She was away from home then. 
 
PATIENT: She wasn't the kind that could take rigorous life. 
 
DOCTOR: Do you have other children? Was this your only child? PATIENT: Oh, no, we have 
three others. 
 
DOCTOR: You have three others. How are they doing? 
 
PATIENT: Fine. 
 
DOCTOR: They are all right? You know what I don't understand? You are a man of middle-age-I 
don't know how old you are yet-but a middle-aged man often has lost a father and a mother. The 
daughter naturally is the most painful, a child is always more painful. Why do you say that because 
you had so many losses your own life seemed kind of insignificant? 
 
PATIENT: I can't answer that question. 
 
DOCTOR: It's paradoxical, isn't it? Because if your life would be insignificant it would be very 
easy to lose it wouldn't it? Do you see what I don't understand? 
 
CHAPLAIN: I just was wondering if this was what he was trying to say. Is this what you were 
trying to communicate? I wasn't sure, what I heard you saying was that the news that you had 
cancer came as a different blow because of the losses you had. 

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PATIENT: No, oh no, I didn't mean that. I mean that in addition to the cancer I had these other 
blows. However, I will say, ah, I was just trying to think of a little idea I had there, that was 
important. You brought up the question of why I would be interested more in death than in life 
since I had three other children. 
 
DOCTOR: I brought this more up to look at the sunny side too. 
 
PATIENT: Yes, well, ah, I don't know whether you realize it but, ah, when these blows come they 
not only have an impact on the father but the entire family. See? 
 
DOCTOR: Yes, that's true. 
 
CHAPLAIN: So your wife has had a pretty hard time too? 
 
PATIENT: My wife and all the children, all the children. And so here I was, living in a morgue you 
might say. 
 
DOCTOR: For a while. Yes.  (Mixed conversation) 
 
PATIENT: It kept on going and I look upon it as a matter of unresolved grief. 
 
DOCTOR: Yes. What Mr. H. is really saying is there was so much grief that it is very hard to take 
more grief now. 
 
PATIENT: That's right. 
 
DOCTOR: How can we help you? Who can help you? Is there anybody that can help with this? 
 
PATIENT: I think so. 
 
DOCTOR: (Not clear) Has anybody helped you? 
 
PATIENT: I've never asked anybody except you. 
 
DOCTOR: Has anybody talked with you like we are talking now? 
 
PATIENT: No. 
 
CHAPLAIN: Well, how about these other losses. When your daughter died, was there anyone then 
that you talked with? Or that your wife talked with? Was this something that was left for 
 
(P84) 
 
the two of you to hold inside? Would you ever talk to each other? 
 
PATIENT: Not very much. 

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