The great majority of people want the same “good” death.

To be “with it” until the end.

To be with people who are friends or family members who care about them.

To have their own wishes honored about how much treatment they want and, equally important, don’t want.

An aging, and dying, order of nuns may be giving one last gift to the world: a model for dying well.

In this story by Jane Gross, who also writes the newspaper’s blog, the New Old Age, you will see why many would welcome this kind of end-of-life care.

The full story says Medicare covers little of this kind of care, which is classified as “home care.”

New York Times

…“A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death — none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care — trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream.

“For the elderly and infirm Roman Catholic sisters here, all of this takes place in a Mother House designed like a secular retirement community for a congregation that is literally dying off, like so many religious orders. On average, one sister dies each month, right here, not in the hospital, because few choose aggressive medical intervention at the end of life, although they are welcome to it if they want.

“We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” said Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president. “Maybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.”

“Primary care for most of the ailing sisters is provided by Dr. Robert C. McCann, a geriatrician at the University of Rochester, who says that through a combination of philosophy and happenstance, “they have better deaths than any I’ve ever seen.” (Emphasis added)

Source: New York Times, July 8, 2009