Love that Hurts
Many of us have a selfish kind of love. “How can I live without my mother? I cannot let her go.”
In the process, we push for useless and inappropriate treatment that increases and prolongs suffering.
A deeper, more humane love is to recognise the suffering and accept the incurability; accept the inevitability of death.
Compassionate care facilitates quality of life for as long as possible, and then facilitates quality of death. The Indian diaspora are ridden with guilt when a loved one falls seriously ill back home and suffers needlessly with futile treatments and interventions, said Dr M.R. Rajagopal in an interview to Mukund Acharya, for a US based online publication India Currents.
You can read the full article here: In Conversation With Dr. M.R. Rajagopal, The Father Of Palliative Care In India
Mukund Acharya is the president and a co-founder of Sukham, a non-profit organization in the Bay Area that advocates for healthy aging.