The search for a gentler end-of-life care for children

[flashl]

In search of a gentler end

The boy had been sick for a long time, and when the cancer, a rare sarcoma, returned, his family knew that time had run out. The best they could hope for was a gentle death for their child at home, surrounded by the people he loved.

But the only hospice program near their rural Montana town had no experience or expertise with dying children, and the nearest one that handled pediatric deaths was hundreds of miles away in Billings. The family could either travel there or take him to the local hospital to die.

Two states away, Dr. Brian Greffe and the Butterfly program at Denver Children’s Hospital stepped in with an option. A pediatric cancer specialist, Greffe coordinated the boy’s end-of-life care from afar, making sure the child and his family got the physical and emotional support they needed. He said the boy died peacefully in his own home three days later.

Colorado’s Butterfly program is at the forefront of a national movement to improve care for seriously ill and dying children. It got a big boost earlier this year when Colorado became one of the first states to win a waiver from Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program for the poor, to pay for services outside of a traditional hospice program for these children and their families.

Many other states are now pursuing waivers or starting similar pilot programs, often adapted from a model developed by Children’s Hospice International, an advocacy group outside Washington D.C.

Everytime I think that America is going backwards there is a newer revelation. Why is there a need for a SPECIAL program to address commonsense procedures?

[Horse with no Name]

1. Children dying is never commonplace

and in many states, the ability to take a child home to die can be met with resistance from the medical community because it is so unnatural.
This is such a wonderful thing. You can't imagine how horrible it is for parents of dying children to find needed resources.

[flashl]

2. I can imagine. In my section of the universe there is a cancer belt

the human toll and suffering is surreal. We have been "studied" by the Cancer society for more than 10 years.

[Horse with no Name]

3. Here too

we are considered a "cancer cluster".
But it's not the fact that these dairies have been pouring their chemicals in the groundwater for years and years.
Couldn't be the obvious, could it?

[flashl]

4. Honestly, whats left to study

How we die? The CDC and other environmental organizations have confirmed that we have carcenigens in our air, water, and ground.

We have enough chemicals in our environment to be certified candidates for X-men mutants.