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Questions at the end of life
If you are reading this, chances are that you or someone close to you has advanced cancer. This probably means that cancer has spread from where it started to other parts of the body, or it has harmed important tissues and organs.

Some people have cancer that is in an advanced stage or can no longer be treated successfully and they must face the fact that they will probably die. This is scary for the person who is sick and for those around them.

• What is going to happen to me?
• Have I done everything I should have done?
• What are the other options?
• Am I going to die?
• How much control will I have over my life and my death?
• Will my wishes be followed?
• How much pain and suffering will I have?
• What if I feel that I can’t take much more treatment?
• What am I going to do about money?
• How long am I going to have to go through this?
• How can I burden my family in this way?
• Will this be too much for my family to bear?
• What happens when I die?

Many people worry about what to say when a person talks about dying. This is something that commonly happens even if some people are comfortable talking about different things in the dying process. Some need to know how they will die, or what will actually happen in the dying process. For answers to these questions, you will need to find experts in hospice care or care of the terminally ill, who can guide you in helping to answer in a general way what possible situations might happen.

If you don't know the specific answer, you can say,"I don't know, but we will call some people who can help us with those answers."Hospice staff answer these kinds of questions every day, and they are skilled in answering those types of questions with good information in a supportive way. In many communities, hospice organizations provide expert and compassionate care for people with advanced disease.

Furthermore, the American Cancer Society web site offers extensive information that may help you understand what to expect, both physically and emotionally, during these last few months. On the Nearing the End of Life section, the information available is written for the person with cancer, but is also very useful to the people who love and support someone with advanced cancer.

Please remember that there are also professional cancer information specialists who are ready to talk with you about these issues 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by calling your American Cancer Society at 1-800-ACS-2345.

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