When a person is asked about their best days in the year gone by, he doesn’t mention the 11 months he went to work, rather he talks about the one month of vacation he took with his family. So, life is not about the quantity but the quality.
There is a difference between being alive and living life. Genuine palliative care can be a window into what your healthcare journey is all about from a clinical perspective to offer choices that are consistent with promoting quality of life and length of life rather than getting random treatments.
The main difference between palliative care and hospice is that palliative care begins almost at the same time as the diagnosis does, and hospice usually starts after the treatment of the disease is stopped, and there are no chances of the patient surviving.
Hence Palliative care mainly focusses on the quality of life for the patient rather than just surviving and getting through life. A palliative caregiver concentrates on giving their patients hope and encouraging them to fight. Fighting doesn’t involve beating the mother nature; fighting doesn’t imply beating the disease; instead, it focusses on living a life that doesn’t live on a false paradigm but setting priorities on what they are fighting for and what is it that they hope for. The patient lives with a hope for good days, for pain that can be managed, for their family to be around them in the holiday season, and to look into their loved one’s eyes and tell them that they love them.
Although palliative care in no way encourages false hopes, it does make sure that they know your exact needs and requirements and they try to meet all that by allowing you to hope for things that are real and true.
All these are very active things, and if one chooses to forego escalation of clinical care because one wishes to be at home and spend that time with family, it doesn’t mean that they are giving up.