Abstract
“Our palliative care physician asked us to stick strongly and firmly to each other in this hard time and asked my dying sister to just take this as a tough exam where question paper is probably out of course, however to give this exam you are not alone. We all are with you.” This was said by one of the two sisters of a dying 30-year-old woman.
How can anyone whom you forced into crying say a word of praise for you? Yes, it happens, and happens when you use the drug called humanity, the essential components of which are love and compassion.
As said by the Dalai Lama, “Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.”
All of us in the medical fraternity do take great care in treating the physical aspects of cancer pain, but what remains untreated most of the time is the emotional and spiritual aspect, from which all of us derive our inner strength to fight through our odds. Herein comes the role of the drug called humanity, which in end-of-life care has a role comparable to another life saving drug called adrenaline. But what requires strong clinical knowledge is the ability to distinguish the need for either of the two drugs. For adrenaline the dose is defined, but the dose of humanity varies according to the strength of the character, humbleness, integrity, and goodness of the soul of the treating physician. End-of-life care, death of the near ones, and bereavement anxiety are issues that need a lot of maturity and sensitivity towards patient and family.
Let's do our best to serve humanity and allow this drug (humanity) to flow in continuous infusions, ’round the clock, till someone comes up with the defined dosage schedule. However, something that does need to be addressed in this process of caring is the care of self by the physician in order to avoid physical, mental, emotional, and financial burnouts, which, in turn, would deprive the patient of the highest standards of humanitarian care.