A Life & Death Conversation with Dr. Bob Uslander

Dr. Bob Uslander
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In this podcast, we talk about life, death and everything in between. We'll explore how to age more gracefully, have meaningful conversations, and what you can do now to ensure the best possible end-of-life experience for yourself and your loved ones. Let's get friendlier with death.

  1. 20/11/2018

    What have We Learned After Two Years of Aid-in-Dying Bedside Care? – Dr. Lonny Shavelson, Ep. 31

    Dr. Lonny Shavelson is the founder of Bay Area End of Life Options, a medical practice in Northern California devoted to educating about medical aid in dying and supporting patients and families through this process. Contact Bay Area End of Life Options Transcript Note: A Life and Death Conversation is produced for the ear. The optimal experience will come from listening to it. We provide the transcript as a way to easily navigate to a particular section and for those who would like to follow along using the text. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio which allows you to hear the full emotional impact of the show. A combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers generates transcripts which may contain errors. The corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print. Please note there is some content that is explicit in this episode. Dr. Bob: Dr. Lonny Shavelson is the founder of Bay Area End of Life Options, a medical practice in Northern California, devoted to educating medical providers about medical aid and dying, and supporting patients and families through this process. As you'll soon discover, Dr. Shavelson is an intelligent, articulation and passionate physician, who has a huge heart and is committed to providing excellent care to people dealing with terminal illnesses. He and I are bonded by a similar commitment. We also share a bond in that we were both emergency physicians in the past. We've seen the standard way people are cared for at the end of life, which is often not very pretty, and often not aligned with how they've lived their life. As you'll hear in this interview, Dr. Shavelson has experienced his own brush with death, which has created far more understanding and empathy than he could've imagined. I hope you find this discussion as informative and interesting as I did. Well, Lonny, I've been looking forward to this conversation with you for quite some time. I saw it coming up on my calendar. I was excited and woke up today really energized to have this conversation and be able to explore deeply, what it's like for you to be a physician that's in the same realm as I am, in support of medical aid and dying. Thank you for taking the time to speak to me and my listeners today. Dr. Shavelson: You're really welcome, I'm glad to be here. Dr. Bob: Yeah. So, just maybe give me a little bit of ... Give all of us a little bit of background, as to how you came to be the physician with Bay Area End of Life Options. What was your journey leading up to that, and what made you decide to venture into this? Dr. Shavelson: Let's see if I can condense this a little bit. When my interest in going into medicine in general, as happens with many people who go into medicine, comes from a family history of dealing with illness. I think many people in medicine if you ask them this question, why you went in, they'll start off with the, "I want to help people," answer. And if you dig a little bit deeper, you'll find there was some illness in the family in their prior history. So mine, very specifically, was my mother had Crohn's Disease. It's an inflammatory disease of the bowel. And because of that disease, imagine having cramps and diarrhea all of your life every day and having multiple surgeries on your bowel to try to accommodate it and bowel obstructions and all that. She was a pretty miserable person, and also in retrospect, severely depressed. So when I was starting at the age of about 14, I became not only aware of the fact that my mother was suicidal, but she enrolled me in pacts for her death. Part of the reason that I was guided toward medical school was because of the, my mother sort of wanting to know that I would be available, not only to help her in her illness but also to help her die. Dr. Bob: Wow. Dr. Shavelson: So we used to have conversations around the dinner table about my mother's dying. And I thought that was the normal way people grew up. I didn't, you know ... You know, if you grow up in a certain way, you assume that that's the way it is. You don't have any other experience of any other childhood to compare it with. So I thought discussions about death and dying were what people talked about during dinner. Dr. Bob: Not me, it wasn't happening at my dinner table, I'll tell you that much. Dr. Shavelson: Yeah, now I realize that [inaudible 00:03:48] doing that. We didn't have football and baseball on the TV. We had sort of philosophical conversations about death and dying, including suicide. Dr. Bob: Wow. Dr. Shavelson: So my mother- Dr. Bob: We had the Dick Van Dyke show, and the Andy Griffith Show. Dr. Shavelson: Well, we did some of that too. It falls short to what it was. So anyway, I grew up with death and dying discussions, including the potential for suicide as a rational way out of an illness. That was one thing that guided me, certainly into medicine, and when I got into medicine, I kind of left that behind for a long time, realizing it was pathological. It wasn't reasonable, especially in my mother's case. She was severely depressed I was her son. She had asked me to help her kill herself a number of times, and I had turned that down. But in the end, I knew that if she was very sick, and if that was what she did, and if it was more reasonable that I would then help her. And this was way before anything like medical aid in dying or what was then called physician-assisted suicide, was even thought to be legal at any time in the future. We were back in the 1970s by the time I went to medical school. Anyways, so that led up to ... You know, I got into my medical career as an emergency medicine doctor. Over time, I developed a dual career as a journalist and a photographer, as well as a medical doctor. So I worked about half time at each and actually moved fairly advanced in journalism with writing some books, with working with NPR as a reporter. So my journalism career took off in the same way that my medical career did, pretty much advancing over time. And to cut this to the chase, in 1996, I wanted to explore this question about what was then called physician-assisted suicide more deeply on an official level. The reason was that Jack Kevorkian was starting his nonsense, killing patients. And I always change that to killing patients who weren't his patients. And I thought that that was not a very good model of what we could look at for helping people die in the United States. But it really struck me that there was a significant underground, where ... You know, and I know, Bob, that before anything was legalized, if somebody were close to death and were really suffering, we would turn up morphine drips, we would increase medications in such a way that we knew we were participating in aid in dying. But with a wink and a nod to the families saying, "Give him morphine once an hour," type of thing. Knowing that would bring on the death. Because the patient was having severe suffering and was nearly unconscious and just needed to be helped along. That, and the presence of the ... I was going to say [inaudible 00:06:38] presence of the AIDS community. People were dying of Autoimmune deficiency disease. And they were really actively participating, but in the underground, of hoarding medication. So if you had AIDS, you could easily tap into the AIDS community and get thousands of tablets of morphine or methadone. It wasn't hard to do, because people were hoarding their medications with the intent of using it themselves. And if they end up not needing it, then they would pass it on to this sort of medical bank where medications were stored. That was the beginning of an interest I had in the pharmacology because they had the pharmacology to really try to do this right. Whereas individuals in their homes and in darkened bedrooms were talking with their family about wanting to die and then taking all of their, let's say their hospice medications. That often did not work. Anyways, this led to a book I wrote, called A Chosen Death, in 1996. And it was called the Dying Confront Assisted Suicide. It was about this underground ... I found families and doctors and nurses, and various people who were participating in a very significant underground. Where they were helping people, who requested aid in dying. They were doing it without charting a note; they were doing it without keeping any record of what happened. But I was able to write the story of five different families as they progressed through this. And in 1996, A Chosen Death came out. And the conclusion was very, very simple. When you look at what I call dark bedroom suicides when you look at those dark bedroom suicides, hidden, and nobody could talk about them, there were so many things wrong. One was that often because of inexperience; the wrong people were taking the wrong medications at the wrong times for the wrong reasons. And then taking medications that didn't work and having disasters follow. It just was a terrible scene, actually. And my conclusion was, this is going to go on like ... Comparison with abortion is very strong, is that there were back-alley abortions, and we were having dark bedroom suicides. What's wrong with the back alley abortions is that they were terrible, they were not supervised, they were not done well. And they would continue no matter what. What's wrong with the dark bedroom suicides was the same. So I made a very strong, I think argument in the book for legalization. Based on the fact that making this illegal was not working, was creating a disaster for families at the most important parts of their loved one's lives. That started, my political involvement for about three, four years I stayed very politically involved as the supreme court was writing its decision. In 1998, the Supreme Court made a decision where all nine justices decided this was not a constitutional right. But that the states had the right to do this. So in other words, ther

    55 分鐘

  2. 15/11/2018

    Debbie Ziegler Shares Her Daughter's Journey to End Her Life With Dignity, Ep. 30

    Debbie Ziegler's daughter, Brittany Maynard at the age of 29 was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor she chose to end her life. Her story was controversial and painful. Debbie shares her daughter's journey in life and how she ended hers. Photo credit: Simon & Schuster Contact Debbie Ziegler website – Get a copy of her book, Wild and Precious Life Note: A Life and Death Conversation is produced for the ear. The optimal experience will come from listening to it. We provide the transcript as a way to easily navigate to a particular section and for those who would like to follow along using the text. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio which allows you to hear the full emotional impact of the show. A combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers generates transcripts which may contain errors. The corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print. Transcript Dr. Bob: Well, Debbie, thank you. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you coming and spending time. We've had a number of conversations over, since we met, which was probably a year or two ago. Debbie Ziegler: Yes. Dr. Bob: I think each time we talk, we get a little bit deeper into the conversations, and I think we both are very aligned in what we're trying to do with our time here. Debbie Ziegler: Absolutely. Dr. Bob: Yeah. I would love to use this time for you to share a bit about Brittany so people can really know who Brittany was. I think a lot of people know the name, Brittany Maynard. It's become, in many areas, a household name, and I think certainly in California, and a lot of people think of her as groundbreaking, but they don't really know Brittany. Hopefully, after this, after people hear this, they'll get your book, and they'll learn a lot about Brittany and about her journey, but I'm hoping that you can share a bit about that, because I think it would be really valuable for people to understand who Brittany was, what she did, and then what you've been doing to carry on her legacy and honor her, so ... Debbie Ziegler: Well, thank you for asking me to speak with you today. Brittany is remembered for the last act of her life, and those last minutes of her life are relived over and over again and spoken of over and over again. She knew they would be, and before she died, she asked me ... She said, "Mama, make sure people remember me for how I lived as much as they remember me for how I died." That is something that I try to honor her by doing, and one of the ways that I honored her was by writing a book about the way she lived, and I titled it Wild and Precious Life because Brittany did live a wild and precious life. She was very much in love with this world, and when she was terminally ill, she would say to me, "The world is so beautiful, Mom. It's just so beautiful, and I'm going to miss it so much." She did not want to leave this earth. Nothing inside of her desired that, but the fact was that she was terminally ill, and she had a terrible and gigantic brain tumor that had been growing for over a decade. When I look back at Brittany's life, I try to focus on the brain and how marvelous and plastic it was to tolerate the growth of a tumor for 10 years and to, as that tumor slowly grew, her plastic, resilient brain transferred function. I try to remember that. Even when I first find out she was sick, she had already lived a miracle, and it's important to focus that. The miracle I wanted to happen, which, of course, was that she wouldn't die, didn't happen, but a miracle had already happened in that she had lived 10 years with the brain tumor growing. Dr. Bob: What a beautiful awareness and a gift. It's so interesting because many people don't have that. Many people have a, are diagnosed relatively quickly after something that starts developing because it's created issues that can't be ignored or- Debbie Ziegler: Yes. Dr. Bob: ... their plasticity won't happen, and so everything changes from that moment

    52 分鐘

  3. 12/10/2018

    Understanding Palliative Care, Dr. Michael Fratkin Ep. 29

    Dr. Michael Fratkin founded ResolutionCare to insure capable and soulful care of everyone, everywhere as they approach the completion of life. Learn how telehealth applications are bringing a greater quality of living and dying to those in need. Contact ResolutionCare website Transcript Note: A Life and Death Conversation is produced for the ear. The optimal experience will come from listening to it. We provide the transcript as a way to easily navigate to a particular section and for those who would like to follow along using the text. We strongly encourage you to listen to the audio which allows you to hear the full emotional impact of the show. A combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers generates transcripts which may contain errors. The corresponding audio should be checked before quoting in print. Please note there is some content that is explicit in this episode. Dr. Bob: Dr. Michael Fratkin is the President and Founder of Resolution Care. Dr. Fratkin is a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a physician, and a very dear friend of mine. Dr. Fratkin is dedicated to the well-being of his community and the community of all human beings. Since completing his training, he's made his home and built his family in rural Northern California. He's served his community as a primary care physician in the community health system, as a medical director of the local hospice, as a leader in the community hospital medical staff, and has been a transformative voice for improving the experience for people facing the end of life. At a time of great demographic and cultural change in our society, Dr. Fratkin has created Resolution Care to ensure capable and soulful care of everyone, everywhere, as they approach the completion of their life. Resolution Care is leveraging partnerships with existing healthcare providers and payers to provide telehealth services that bring a greater quality of life and greater quality of dying. The palliative care team at Resolution Care openly shares their expertise and mentorship so that people can receive the care they need, where they live, and on their own terms. In this podcast interview, Dr. Fratkin shares his passion and his intimate experience as a provider of care. He's innovative; he's creative, he's dedicated beyond what I've experienced with just about anybody else who I've communicated with about palliative care and end-of-life care. I think you're gonna find this podcast to be incredibly informative and really interesting. Okay, Michael, thank you so much for taking time out of your day. I know you've got lots of irons in the fire and lots of people vying for your attention. So I really appreciate having time to connect with you. Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I always enjoy talking with you. We connect sporadically, not as much as either of us would probably want, but we have been pretty consistent in finding times to connect and catch each other up on what's happening with our lives and our different enterprises. And what's interesting is, after our conversations, I always think to myself, "I wish other people could have heard that. I wish other people had a chance to listen in and hear what we're developing, and sort of the passion that comes out in these conversations." They're so informative, for me, and I find it so inspiring to hear what you're doing and the service that you're providing and creating. So today we have that opportunity so that people are going to be able to listen in on our conversation. In the introduction, I shared a bit about what you're doing, who you are, but I'd like to have you just do a little synopsis of what Resolution Care is doing currently, where it started from its humble beginnings, and what your vision is for where this is heading. Dr. Fratkin: I'm a dad, I'm a husband, I'm a brother, I'm a son, I'm a whole lot of stuff. But I'm also what's called a palliative care doctor. And your group of listeners probably know a lit

    59 分鐘
  4. A Life and Death Conversation with Dr. Bob Uslander

    20/09/2018

    A Life and Death Conversation with Dr. Bob Uslander

    In this podcast, we talk about life, death and everything in between. We'll explore how to age more gracefully, have meaningful conversations, and what you can do now to ensure the best possible end-of-life experience for yourself and your loved ones. Let's become friendlier with death.     Transcript Dr.Bob Uslander: Just me. I will be having guests and bring a number of fascinating, interested, and dedicated people onto this show to share their wisdom and expertise. I thought I would take this first show as an opportunity to introduce myself and give you a bit more of an understanding of why I feel this topic and this conversation is so vitally important. Every day in the course of my work, I have life and death conversations. I talk with people about how to make their life better, more comfortable, more supported and, frankly, more enjoyable. I also talk with people about how to make their death better. When people are no longer able to find comfort, or joy, or meaning in their lives because they're old or they're sick, the only thing that they really look forward to at that point is their death and it's amazing to me when somebody is willing to sit with them and talk about that in a comfortable way, in a way that doesn't make them feel judged or make them feel afraid. They open up. They are so grateful to have that kind of honest conversation and connection. I've been a physician now for close to 30 years and I've had so many conversations. Initially, I was very uncomfortable with the whole concept of death.  When I first finished medical school and began my training and then my work as an ER physician,  I had a lot of encounters with death. But, for the beginning of the early part of my career, death was always the enemy. When somebody died, it was a failure and we tried to avoid that at all costs. As I've gotten older, hopefully, a little wiser, and I've had more experiences, personal experiences, as well as experiences in my career, I've come to understand the concept of death and how death fits in a much deeper way. I no longer feel that it's the enemy. I actually feel a close kinship, a friendship with death. That's what I want this conversation to do for others, to help you and everybody learn how to feel like death is not your enemy but your friend. This is delicate stuff. I get that. It's very important stuff. I believe that as a society we need to become more comfortable with the concept of death. We need to understand how our idea of death influences our life day-to-day because death is as much a part of life as birth. They're two sides of the same coin. We have no trouble talking about birth. Will it be a natural birth or will it happen in the hospital? Will it be quick? Will it go on for hours or days? Who will be in the delivery room? It's a very natural thing for people to excitedly discuss all the details of the birth of a child. We even have parties to celebrate the upcoming birth and that's great. I think that's the way it should be, but only a small number of people seem comfortable talking about death whether we're discussing our own death or the death of someone else. Most people do anything they can to avoid that conversation or they quickly change the subject when in a conversation. This avoidance of talking about death leads to an amazing, incredible amount of unnecessary struggle. It leads to anxiety. It leads to regret. It leads to guilt that can last a lifetime for a person who experiences the death of a loved one or a friend. I want to repeat that because really that's the reason I'm having this conversation. Refusing to talk about death leads to an enormous amount of anxiety, struggle, regret, and guilt. Most of that is completely avoidable. I believe the reason that I've been so successful in my new medical practice, which is in large part helping people to have a more dignified and peaceful end of life, is because I'm willing to talk about this. I'm willing to talk about death in a way that most physicians aren't. Unfortunately, most doctors are as uncomfortable and maybe even more uncomfortable talking about death than their patients. This really compounds the problem. One of my goals is to help you help everyone feel more comfortable talking about death because I'm convinced that's how we can achieve a better life. I want you to be more comfortable so that you can figure out how to make sure that you or someone that you care about has the most comfortable and struggle-free death whenever that happens. I want you to have the tools you need so if you're supporting a loved one through the end of their life or you're approaching the end of your life, you don't end up having regret. If you are supporting a loved one, I don't want you to have regret and guilt about what you did or didn't do during that time. When you're right in the middle of that storm, that's not the time to be preparing. The time to do that is now while you have the opportunity. Here's what we need to agree on. It's going to happen. You're going to die. I'm going to die. The people you love are going to die. Our pets are going to die. Try as we might, there is nothing that can change that. Every living creature that comes into existence will die someday, from the insect that lives less than 24 hours to the tallest and mightiest redwood tree that lives for centuries. Everything has its time and then it dies and you're no different. I'm no different. Your parents are no different. Even your children are no different. The goal should not be to try and ignore or defy that principle, that fact of life. The goal should be to recognize and even to embrace the magnificence of this master plan or the random nature of things, whichever way you believe. But the goal is to live a life of meaning and joy and to feel gratitude for whatever time we have to share in this adventure that we call life. There are two choices. You have two choices. You can refuse to think about death, refuse to plan for it, even live in fear of it or you can find a way to become friends with death, to embrace it, to prepare for it and to allow the awareness and acceptance of death to inspire you to live with more inspiration and even to comfort you. Again, death isn't the enemy. What I believe is the enemy is a life without joy, without a sense of control and without hope that things will get better. I'd like to share how I view or feel about death. I don't know exactly how I came to this awareness but it's been helpful for me and comforting for me and perhaps it can be that for you as well. I see death like the same way that I feel about an old friend, a friend who I knew when I was very, very young, maybe four, five years old. I have these friendships from my earliest years that were very dear and I look back at those relationships with a lot of fondness. I feel there was a deep connection that was based on sharing joy. There was very little else. I know that I haven't seen this person, this friend, for many, many years and I may not see that friend for many, many more years. But, I believe that someday in the future I will again. We will reunite. When we do, we'll have this immediate sense of connection, recognition, love, and comfort, and the time that has gone by, the decades that have gone by will be meaningless. We know each other in a way that transcends the knowledge of what happened day-to-day in your life. Those things don't matter. They're just the details. I have this sense that death is like this old friend who's not thinking about me all the time, not necessarily looking forward to anything in particular. But one day we will meet again and we will know each other deeply. That's how I feel about death because before I was born, I was in a void and I was in the same space where I will be again after I die. There's a familiarity. We've been there already. We have nothing to fear. Interestingly, my first exposure to death was pretty traumatic. I look back now and I think about that first real experience with the death of another person and that happened in my third year of medical school. I'll share that story because I think it's fairly poignant. Up until that time, the only person I had known who had died was my grandfather and an old aunt. I wasn't there when they died, and as a child, it impacted me, but I was somewhat removed from it. On the very first day of my third year of medical school, that's when we start doing our clinical rotations and I was on the internal medicine rotation in that very first day. The first two years we spend mostly in classrooms and auditoriums doing lectures and going into labs and dissecting cadavers and learning about germs and medications. We'd have a little bit of contact with patients just by practicing, taking histories and doing physicals but we really didn't take care of anybody. That very first day after a long day of working on the medical ward, I was on call and it was my very first night being in the hospital and I was very excited, a little anxious. I didn't know what to expect. I was very excited. After dinner, I went to my call room and I cracked open my textbook. Then I got called to do a few things, draw some blood, go and manage a couple of minor things. About midnight, I was ready to turn in and try to get some rest. All of a sudden, I've heard the alarm, the code blue alarm goes off. I heard that there was a code blue in the ICU. My call room was immediately across the hall from the ICU so I jumped up and I ran across the hall and I ran into the ICU and I saw a whole bunch of activity in this one bay. I walked into it and I saw a group of nurses scurrying around frantically and on a gurney on the middle of the room was a man who looked like he was in his 40s. He was a young man. He wasn't an old man. He was young and they were trying to administer medications and trying to figure out what do. I realized there were no doctors in the room. There was nobody actual

    26 分鐘

  5. 20/09/2018

    Healing After A Loss, Ken Druck Ep. 3

    Dr. Ken Druck's work in personal transformation, male psychology, parenting, and grief literacy has awakened readers to their absolute best selves for almost four decades. In this episode, Dr. Druck and Dr. Bob talk about healing after a loss.     Contact Dr. Ken Druck website Transcript Dr. Bob: I'm here with a good friend of mine who I'm excited to have this conversation with. Ken Druck and I have had many conversations over the years, most of which end up being fairly deep and a lot of insights come out of them. I think we're just both in this space of really contemplating life as well as death just because of who we are and our experiences. I'm excited to have Ken share some of his insights. He'll do that in just a moment, but I'd like to introduce him to you. Ken's work in personal transformation, parenting, psychology, and the literacy of grief has really helped people become, I think, their best selves for almost 40 years now. When you look at Ken, you can't believe he's been doing this work for that long. He's the recipient of numerous awards including a Distinguished Contribution to Psychology, Visionary Leadership Award. He has really a lifetime of service to the community. He's recognized really as a lifeline to people all over the world, to individuals, families, and communities through his work, which includes the founding of the Jenna Druck Center to honor the life and spirit of his daughter, Jenna; and we'll talk a bit about Jenna and the foundation that he created. Ken really has kind of set a new standard of care and healing out of tragedies like 9/11, Columbine, Katrina, and Sandy Hook, and I look forward to having him talk a little bit about how those experiences have shaped his life and his perspective. Ken has recently come out with a new book called Courageous Aging: Your Best Years Ever Reimagined. In this book, Dr. Ken explores the fears, some of the myths and biases in our culture about aging, so it's a perfect setup here for this conversation. In the book, he also kind of debunks a lot of the myths and offers a path to help people immerse themselves in the wisdom that we've cultivated over the course of our lives. With that introduction, I would like to introduce and ask Ken to say hello. Dr. Ken Druck: Greetings, Bob. So good to be with you and in a conversation, in a life and death conversation. My goodness. What a wonderful forum you've created to be able to talk openly and safely about all these important issues that so directly improve the quality of our lives and the quality of our deaths. Dr. Bob: Yeah. Well, I appreciate that. The inspiration for this really comes from life, from just being in this space. You're the same way. You're having conversations with people, both personal and in your professional life. I think, like me, there are many times when you think, wow, if somebody else had been able to listen in on this conversation, how much value would they have received, how much insight into their own issues and their own struggles and their own sort of triumphs. The conversations I have with my patients, with their families, with people like you, I think are so valuable, and I don't want to keep it to ourselves, right? I feel compelled and pulled to really allow people in on these conversations, so thank you for being willing to join in. Dr. Ken Druck: Thank you for having me. Dr. Bob: Yeah, absolutely. In your introduction, I abbreviated it. There's so much more, and I think we're going to have a conversation that will last about 30 minutes. I know that the wealth of information that you have and the experiences and insights could go on for 30 hours or potentially 30 days. It's going to be a challenge, but we're going to try to keep this concise enough, and then probably have follow- up conversations as time goes on. I posed some questions to you in advance of our conversation, and I want to jump right in. I don't mince words, and I don't pull back. I just want to get this out there because I want this to be part of our conversation, and I want it to inform and infuse our conversation. What are your thoughts about death? Are you afraid of dying? Do you have fear about dying? When you think about death, what comes up for you? Dr. Ken Druck: Well, it's a great question that does go right to the core. For me, the fear or the feelings about death are a moving target. It's not as though you run a marathon and you cross the 26-mile line and it's done. I think things that happen over the seasons and the course of our lives ask us or challenge us or force us to confront how we feel about death, and I'm no different. The death of my daughter 21 years ago was an opportunity as well as a tragedy—  the opportunity to face down my biggest fears of death. My daughter had died. I had to come face-to-face with that reality, starting with holding her body in my hands, in my arms, facing the idea that her life as we knew it had ended. I thought going all the way back to last year where my 92-year-old mother passed, and I had a chance to help her die. I think the things that happen that we react to or the losses we suffer effect and change and create opportunities for us to face down our biggest fears of death, to comes to terms with our life as it really is, life on its terms as it is, and to settle some of those fears. Now, are they going to be settled forever? Are we going to find peace or make peace and have peace forever and it's a done deal? No. Those concerns, those feelings, the sorrow, the love, the complex of emotions that come with dealing with death are going to bubble up and resurface. We want to make sure not just to wait for death to arrive or somebody we love to pass.  We want to be proactive and take steps to get ahead of the pain curve, to get ahead of the fear curve. Dr. Bob: That's awesome. How do you do that? I know it might be hard just to distill it down into a sentence or two, but how do you get ahead of that? If there's somebody who maybe has fear because of an experience because maybe somebody in your family had a tragic death or a difficult death and, like many people, you live with this underlying anxiety or fear about this mystery and when is it going to happen and how painful is it going to be. How do you think people can get ahead of that? Dr. Ken Druck: Well, I boiled it down to what I call the five ideals of courageous living and how we face down the fear of death. I've got basically five things that I recommend. Number one, stay humble, find peace in your unknowingness because there’re  sometimes in life where we just don't know, and we have to hold that unknowingness in gentle hands rather than trying to force and will it into knowingness. We're basically part of something so big that at times it's unfathomable. The true nature of the universe—where life comes from, where it goes when we die—is an unfolding mystery. All we have to do is look up at the stars to understand that. The second thing is to cultivate a calm mind that allows naturally arising fears and doubts to come and go and learn to breathe and release even those primordial fears. It's kind of a form of surrender, and we can learn how to make peace with life as it really is by summoning courage, by facing in. Third is to take the elephant out of the room by opening the lines of conversation, just as you and I are doing today by talking about death and discussing our thoughts and feelings with people we trust. Fourth, keeping the faith of whatever we believe in our heart to be true or what we wish to be true. It's okay to abide by a hoped-for narrative without knowing that it's 100% accurate or not. We don't have to know with complete certainty that oh, here's what it is, here's the program for death, I read it somewhere or somebody told me this is what it is, or this is my sense of it. It's okay to keep the faith, to have it be a gesture of faith, to believe whatever we believe in our heart is true. Lastly, it's also just fine to have faith in a divine truth without apology or justification. We can do that while respecting and honoring the rights of other people who have different views or different religion or different spiritual path that they're on and a different view of things. Those are the things that I believe we can do to cultivate a courageous attitude towards living and to face down the fear of death. Dr. Bob: That's beautiful, so really this is universal. I mean, it's regarding any fear or anything that might be challenging us or limiting us in our life, not specifically around a fear of death, but that seems to be a big one for a lot of people, right? Dr. Ken Druck: Yeah. You know, Bob. We've got these brilliant emotional systems. They're as sophisticated if not more so in some ways than all the other systems that sustain life. We have this emotional system, which gives us internal signals, radar signals, from inside of ourselves, right inside of our hearts, showing up as our emotions. When these feelings turn up, it's our job to learn how to manage them, to decipher them, to decode them, to understand them, and to utilize them as part of our radar, as part of our self management, and to use them to our advantage rather than oh, that's a negative feeling, I better shoot it. That's negative. We've been brainwashed into believing that there are negative feelings rather than understanding that some feelings that bubble up and surface are going to be sorrow, fear, anxiety, worry, frustration, that we need to read these feelings, not become prisoners to them, but to read them and to have them inform us about what action to take, to inform us that it's time to vent those feelings. We're not built to hold them in steel compartments inside of our bodies, but to vent them in a healthy and constructive way and to turn those feelings into something good. Dr. Bob: Yeah. I think that's powerful. I think people need to be given permission to feel, right? My sense

    40 分鐘
  6. Why I'm Ending My Life, Bill Andrews Ep. 2

    20/09/2018

    Why I'm Ending My Life, Bill Andrews Ep. 2

    Dr. Bob's patient, Bill Andrews had ALS and was terminally ill. Before Bill decided to exercise his right to die in California, he agreed to do this interview to help others understand the importance of the law and his decision.     Transcript Dr. Bob:  Hi everybody. I'm here today on the phone with a gentleman who I'm really interested in having everybody hear from and meet. It's kind of a unique opportunity on all counts to hear from a gentleman who has lived life very fully, really did a lot of things that many people only dream about doing in his life and before he was able to really see that life through, was afflicted by a disease that has no cure and is universally debilitating and in many cases fatal. He's become a patient and a friend and I've had an opportunity to really be amazed by his story and by his outlook and approach, both himself and his family. We only have a brief opportunity to hear from and learn from Bill because, well, you'll find out why in just a bit. I'd love to introduce William Bill Andrews. Bill, say hello to our listeners. Bill Andrews: Hello listeners. Dr. Bob: Thanks. Bill Andrews: This is Bill Andrews reporting in. Dr. Bob: Thank you, Bill. Thank you so much for being here. Bill, who's with you? You have a couple of your sons with you as well. Can we introduce them? Bill Andrews: Yes. I'm with my oldest son, Brian, and my youngest son, Chris. Dr. Bob: All right, and thank you guys for Bill Andrews: They can say hello, I guess. Brian: Hello. Dr. Bob: All righty. Sounds good. As I mentioned, Bill is a 73-year-old gentleman with ALS. Bill, how long have you had ALS? Bill Andrews: I'm going to say probably about—I'm going to guess about two years. Dr. Bob: Okay. Bill Andrews: I was diagnosed about what, a year and a half ago, Brian? Brian: One year ago. Bill Andrews: One year ago. Then it was very obvious that there was something seriously wrong. The precursor to this is I had broken my back. I used to motocross and do a lot of surfing and stuff and I had many, many ... I brought injuries into the ALS experience. Broken back. Oh, just all kinds of stuff, so when I finally couldn't deal with the kind of the day-to-day life of my current injuries and stuff, that's when I really got [inaudible 00:02:51 ALS because I couldn't stand up. I could barely walk. I was still trying to surf, like an idiot, but it became very difficult. Just a year and a half ago I was in Peru surfing. Dr. Bob: Wow, but you knew something was going on? You had already Bill Andrews: I knew something was going on. Dr. Bob: Okay. Bill Andrews: I knew something serious was going on. Dr. Bob: Then a year ago it was officially diagnosed and then what’s Bill Andrews: Correct. Dr. Bob: What are things like today? Bill Andrews: Horrible. I'm in bed. I get fed. I wear diapers. I'm kind of confined to my bed. We have a Hurley lift, I'm going to guess that thing is called. Dr. Bob: A Hoyer lift. Bill Andrews: Hoyer lift, and I just get into that and I have an electric wheelchair. Last weekend I was able to get out and see my kids play some sports and stuff, but that's about it. This is where I live now. At Silvergate, room 1-1-3 in my hospital bed. Dr. Bob: Wow, and a year and a half ago you were surfing in Peru? Bill Andrews: When was it? Brian: Yeah. It was a year and a half ago. Yeah. Yeah. Bill was surfing in Peru. Bill Andrews: But I knew there was something wrong, you know? I was struggling. Dr. Bob: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bill Andrews: Really mightily. Dr. Bob: Yeah. As far as you are aware, and you've been dealing with this and obviously researching being treated. You've been in the system. Bill Andrews: Correct. Dr. Bob: Everybody, the best that medical care has to offer has been offered to you, I'm assuming. Bill Andrews: Correct. Dr. Bob: Here you are in this situation. What is your understanding of what will happen if things just are allowed to go on as they would normally? Bill Andrews: Well, as I understand it, I will not be able to swallow my food chew my food, swallow my food. Nor be able to breathe on my own, as I understand it. Dr. Bob: Right. Which is correct. I mean, the timeframe for those things is unclear. Bill Andrews: Right. Dr. Bob: Have the doctors given you any estimates? Bill Andrews: No. That's a moving target. No, they haven't. No. Uh-uh (negative). Dr. Bob: Okay, but that's inevitable for every person who has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Bill Andrews: I haven't heard of anything yet. I tell people, you know, I'd guess ... Because I have some friends that say, “Well, look, Bill, a cure may be right around the corner. You know, just stay in bed and they'll invent a cure and you're going to be fine." Well, that ain't going to happen. In my lifetime anyway. I don't want to go out with the tube in me and all that stuff. I feel at least now I'm reasonably good mentally and this is kind of where  I'm at a good point right now. Spiritually, emotionally, physically. Dr. Bob: Great. Bill Andrews: That's where I am. Dr. Bob: That's where you are. Bill Andrews: Yep. Dr. Bob: What's your game plan? You want to talk about the strategy and what's been happening? Bill Andrews: Well, my game plan is—well, for the last couple of weeks I've been trying to wrap up a lot of little-unfinished tasks and chores that I wanted to complete, little projects, but I think they're doing just fine. I think my family ... I guess the big thing for me is that my family, that we're all on the same page. That to me was crucial. That we all understood what I was doing and why I was doing it and that this was all my choice. Looking at what the options are and for me, an option is not being confined to my bed the rest of my life and being kept alive. I don't want to be a Stephen Hawking, and another thing that I wanted to really pass on to my kids is that I'm not fighting the battle, I'm just kind of lying here. I'm getting taken care of. This ain't a bad ... You know, if you like getting taken care of, this ain't bad. I get my diapers changed, get fed, get dessert. People run errands for me, but the warriors are like my kids and the caregivers and the doctors like you are. You guys are the warriors. I'm just a ... You know, you're the warriors and right now I'm just kind of a settler. I just got to lie here but you guys are out there doing the battle. Dr. Bob: What an incredibly refreshing perspective to have. You know? You're not feeling like a victim like so many people justifiably do. You know, you're seeing it from so many different angles, not just your own. Not only through your own eyes, which is remarkable, I think. Bill Andrews: Oh, thank you. Well, yeah. About 30-something years ago I was diagnosed with a real, pretty bad case of malignant melanoma and I was only given a few months to live at that time. That was about 30-something years ago. My kids were there when I was diagnosed and everything, so I've already fought that battle. I had the tumor taken out of my arm. Had my lymph nodes excised. I fought that battle because I could see there's was a way to win that one, so there I kind of feel like I was a warrior, but here, ah, you guys are. Dr. Bob: Mm-hmm (affirmative). That battle, the melanoma battle, I've seen how that turns out in most cases, which is not the way it turned out for you. It was, at least back then - Bill Andrews: No, I was bad with the - Dr. Bob: You were well aware of that. I know. Bill Andrews: I was very, very lucky. Yeah, I was very lucky. In fact, kind of going a little off track, at the time I had it they were experimenting with BCG injections. Dr. Bob: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bill Andrews: Up at UCLA. They were going to inject BCG in the initial site of the tumor for melanoma. Dr. Bob: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Bill Andrews: I sent my path report up to them and they rejected me because the path report looked so bad, that I probably was going to die. They didn't want that on the report. Dr. Bob: Wow. Bill Andrews: I kind of fought that one out anyway. Dr. Bob: Yeah. Bill Andrews: Flipped a little bit. Dr. Bob: You faced your mortality, right? You had no choice but to face your mortality at that point. Bill Andrews: Correct. Dr. Bob: You were what? Bill Andrews: Oh, there is no choice. Dr. Bob: Yeah. You were in your 40's? Bill Andrews: Yeah. Absolutely. Dr. Bob: With children that were young. Right? Bill Andrews: Right. Correct. Dr. Bob: Certainly not grown adults. Bill Andrews: They were there in the doctor's office with me, yeah. Dr. Bob: Yeah. Bill Andrews: Right. Dr. Bob: I think you were sort of alluding to this and assuming that, maybe assuming that some of the people out there who are listening know what we're talking about.  But I don't think we actually discussed what the option is that you are taking to handle things the way that you feel best. Can you share a bit, share that? Bill Andrews: Sure. I, you know, kind of put a box on the board. I'll kind of equate this back to my melanoma. With the melanoma, I was given ... The doctors said, "Well, you kind of have three choices. 1: You do nothing because it appears to be fairly advanced melanoma and just see what happens. 2: You look for some miracle cure somewhere. Go to Haiti or somewhere and find a miracle cure. Or 3: Let conventional medicine dig in, and I took the third choice and I'm still here. With the ALS the choices seem to be kind of the same. I can just sit back here and wait until I can no longer breathe or eat. Or I can be kept alive by breathing tubes and feeding tubes and stuff. Or I can do with this choice that I'm making now, which is to go through the end of life in a peaceful happy way with ... I mean, I feel good about this, doctor, I really do. As long as my family's on board with me it's spectacular. I really don't think there's ... The choice for me, and this is easy, you know. This is the time and I'm not going to be ke

    41 分鐘

  7. 20/09/2018

    A Nurse's Personal Story About End-Of-Life, Jillian Alexander Ep. 4

    A long-time nurse shares her personal story about her father's end-of-life experience. Hear what the aid-in-dying process was like for her and her family.       Transcript Dr. Bob: The person I'm going to introduce you to today and have a conversation with is a woman who I haven't known very long but in the short time that we have known each other we've become very close friends and co-creators on this journey around exploring how to make the best out of life and helping to support people through complex illnesses and approaching the end of life. Her name is Jillian Alexander and I'm just going to tell you a little bit about Jillian and then I'm going to turn it over and let Jillian tell you more about herself. I think it'll be a fascinating discussion. Jillian has an amount of experience both from a professional standpoint and from a personal standpoint. We've had many conversations and I'm excited to introduce her to you. Before I go on and talk a little bit more about you, Jillian, why don't you just say hello? Jillian: Hello Dr. Bob, nice to talk to you. Dr. Bob: It's wonderful. Thank you so much for taking time to be with me. Jillian is a nurse, she's a registered nurse and has been for 35 years though if you look at her you would think that she actually finished nursing school when she was eight, so it's hard to believe that. She's been a registered nurse and has worked in both pediatric intensive care units and neonatal intensive care units, so a lot of her clinical work has been in the pediatric setting. In 2012, she completed a Master's of Science in nursing and she specialized in education. Now, she's doing a lot of educating of other nurses in obstetrics and pediatrics. Her personal experience with supporting people has been like many of us in the healthcare profession, we take care of anybody who asks us to and especially family members. Eight years ago Jillian's sister, Lauren, her younger sister was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and at that point Jillian took a leave from her job and spent three months with her sister when she underwent surgery with a port placed in her abdominal cavity so that they could administer chemotherapy directly into the area where the cancer was. She went to all of her sister's treatments and after that, her sister actually did really well, Lauren did well and had five years during which time she was in remission.  But in 2014 the ovarian cancer returned and they started together as a family looking at treatment options, doing a lot of research, looking into clinical trials, traveling. Lauren was blessed to have fairly extensive resources available to her so she was really able to find the best care that was available at the time. Despite that, the cancer continued to spread and in 2016 it became apparent that the treatments were not effective, she was getting extremely weak, and having issues with bowel obstructions. That’s about the time that I was brought into the picture, so this was late in 2016. Jillian continued to live in the San Diego area, taking an extensive leave from her career, from the family that she had out there, and was an amazing advocate for her sister, to try to give her the best possible quality of life and support during what she knew to be the final phase of Lauren's life. Lauren passed away, I believe it was in January 2017, is that correct? Jillian: Correct. Dr. Bob: It was truly an incredible experience to be a) working that closely with Lauren and support her, but I was completely blown away and amazed by the level of commitment that Jillian showed by her sensitivity.  We created something almost like a little hospital/hospice setting and we were able to give Lauren a very beautiful and very supportive environment for the final weeks, months of her life. Since that time Jillian’s her life has taken a completely different turn and I'm going to turn it over now and I'm going to allow Jillian to talk a little bit about what that experience was like and what's happened in her life since then. Jillian, a) thank you for being my friend, b) thank you for what you bring to people, and c) let's hear what's been happening for you. Jillian: Thank you, Dr. Bob. That was really sweet. The first thing I really want to say is that, even though I had been a nurse for 35 years, I really didn't know what to do to help my sister. She was so ill, she had a couple of extensive stays in the hospital where they would do another CAT scan and ended up putting a port into her lungs because they had to drain fluid from her lungs every day so she could breathe.  I was really struggling to find her palliative care. I didn't really know exactly what it was and my sister was a real fighter. She didn't want to hear and she would say, "I hope they don't give me my hospice card this time." The “H” word was a bad word and so I didn't know what to do because outside of hospice how do I find someone to help me? I started searching and I had a friend, who happens to be a palliative care physician, who said, "They have to have palliative care, ask them." I started asking her oncologist to get me palliative care and they set me up for an appointment.  But it was three weeks away and my sister was so sick, and I didn't know what to do to help her because she couldn't be at home in her condition without, like Bob said, a hospital type room in her home. I wanted her to be at home and she wanted to be at home. When they gave me Dr. Bob's phone number and I had the first conversation with him, I knew right away I had found the right person. I can't explain how desperate I was and how many dead ends I was facing when I tried to advocate for my sister even something as simple as helping control her pain.  Because she had a bowel obstruction, she couldn't take medicine by mouth, and I knew that a fentanyl patch would help her, but the oncologist said she had to be in hospice to get a fentanyl patch. I said, "Well, why?" I couldn't get her the help. When I finally met Dr. Bob, within 24 hours we had her at home, on a fentanyl patch, with IV medication to control her pain when that didn't work, and everything we needed to keep her comfortable. Every medication and it changed everything from this aura of suffering and fear to there's somebody here that's going to help us go through the next phase of our journey. Finally, someone ... Honestly, Dr. Bob, you were the first one who said to my sister, "You're too sick to have treatment. Maybe if you get stronger,…” because she just wanted treatment, treatment, treatment, and nobody said that to her. Nobody said you can't have treatment;  it was a relief to stop trying to find treatment somewhere. She was ready to go to Mexico and try anything she could because, like you said, she had the resources and the fight in her to try to stay alive.  But you can't always win. Sometimes you're going to cause more suffering than you need to and that's where you helped us to make a bridge, so to speak, for that next experience, and made it palatable, and made her understand and accept what was going to happen. Dr. Bob:    Jillian: It really was beautiful. Dr. Bob: From my perspective, I didn't know her that well, and we just met, and it was a really challenging.  It was challenging on many levels but, knowing what a fighter she was and hearing from everybody and her husband who would not hear anything other than full charge, whatever it takes we're going to do it and we were not going to quit. I don't think we mentioned how old she was at the time. She was very young, she was 53, is that- Jillian: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Dr. Bob: I knew that she wasn't ready to just throw in the towel, but I think as we discussed the best approach we had to keep hope alive for her that there was a possibility that she could resume treatment at some time so we never ... I wouldn't say no treatment is going to help you. It was really no treatment is going to help you right now and it's likely to harm you. Now, the focus is on finding a way to be comfortable, to build yourself back up if that is possible,  and we'll do everything we can to keep that possibility open. She was incredible. She had a naturopath coming in, she was getting infusions of amino acids and other types of supplements that would be beneficial. She had a masseuse coming in and helping to keep her muscles relaxed and she had a team. You were a major part of building this team, but I think what you are lacking and what I was able to come in and provide was a leader of the team, a captain of the ship, to help  coordinate all  the things that needed to be put in place and keep you and the family from being so incredibly overwhelmed. It was a gift for me and you stepped up like nobody I've ever seen. An incredible champion for her in an incredibly complicated environment. You were my teacher as well and I think. Jillian: I think what I would say about that is sometimes you have to meet patients where they are. It's not about you; it's about the patient and, even though I would've dealt with it differently because I know so much and I knew what was happening, we really tried to meet her where she was. She knew she was dying; she would say little things like, "I don't want a funeral,”—just blurt it out all of a sudden—or other things that she would want to happen if she died. She told me her dying wishes for her siblings and family members, but she didn't want to accept it and actually was taking a medication up until two days before she died that was maybe going to help her. I supported her in that too because I felt it was her journey and her decision to try as hard as she felt she wanted to try. Dr. Bob: Yeah, and she wasn't doing it for herself. She was doing it for her family because she had children, the youngest of which was 12, and leaving him was the main thing that was causing her so much angst. We weighed that when we looked at the pros and cons of

    39 分鐘

  8. 20/09/2018

    From Attempted Suicide to Intentional Living, Diane Forster Ep. 5

    Diane Forster is an Intentional Living Expert and author of "I Have Today". Diane talks about her attempted suicide, how she changed her life and is now helping others. Hear what helped turn her life around.     Contact Diane Forster website Transcript Dr. Bob: I'm here with my guest, Diane Forster, and I'm really excited about having this conversation with Diane. She's an incredibly dynamic woman. I was only recently introduced to Diane through a mutual friend, and this friend somehow knew that Diane and I were kind of kindred spirits and would hit it off and have a lot in common, and I'm excited about where this friendship is going, and I just immediately felt that Diane would be somebody who our listeners would really like to hear from. She has a very interesting story. She's made quite a dramatic shift in her life that was inspired by things that she'll be willing and happy to share with you. Diane, she calls herself an intentional living expert, and she's a coach, mentor, and facilitates masterminds. She is very well educated and trained in NLP and human interaction technology. She works with clients privately in their professional and personal goals, has really helped transform many lives, and it really comes from having hard her own transformation in her life. She's an author, a best-selling author of a book called I Have Today, Find Your Passion, Purpose and Smile Finally, and is the founder of I Have Today, which really focuses on helping women living more empowered, fulfilling lives. Interestingly, Diane's also an inventor, and I will let her share more about how that has happened and what being an inventor has brought to her life and means to her. So Diane, thank you so much for being here. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Diane Forster: Thank you so much, Bob. Thank you for having me. I'm honored to be here, and I feel the same way, kindred spirits immediately. Dr. Bob: So, we're talking about life and death. As you know, my focus is on ... I mean, I think we have a lot of alignment. My focus is on helping people live a more peaceful and meaningful life in the face of challenges. I didn't necessarily come to this calling, or I didn't find it, it didn't find me for a while, but once it did, it's been driving me, inspiring me, pretty much every moment of my life, and it's about having a meaningful life, and it's about having a peaceful and self-determined end of life. So, you ... In our initial meeting, you really kind of blew me away with where you came from and what you were experiencing and where you are now. So, would you be willing to share a little bit about that? Diane Forster: Of course. I'm happy to. You know when I was in my late 20's, I got married, and I married a man that, we weren't really in love with each other, but we loved each other, and it just seemed like the timing to ... It was the time of life to do that, and I grew up with a mom and a dad who really, didn't really love each other ... Weren't in love with each other, but did love each other. Let me say that better. And so I never really witnessed any real romantic, intimate connection between the two of them, so I grew up thinking that's what marriage looked like.  So, of course, I attracted a man into my life who was similar, and while we had a deep love for each other in some ways, we didn't have that connection, and I struggled in that marriage for many, many years, trying to make it work. And what was happening to me is I just didn't want to walk away. I didn't want to be a failure. I didn't want to give up on it. I thought I could make it work, and it just was not working, and my soul and spirit were chipping away, day after day, month after month, year after year until many years into it, almost 20 years into it, I just couldn't take it anymore, and one night, in June of 2011, I attempted to take my life. I just thought I can't feel this pain and loneliness anymore. And so what happened to me in the bathroom that night, was I had two full bottles of pills in my hand, and I was ready to end it all, and they got knocked out of my hand, and the voice that I heard told me, "You are not ending your life this way, Diane. You need to go get help. You need to tell your story because you need to help others." And being a very intuitive person, I just threw my hands up and said, "Well, you need to show me the way." And so, that was a pivotal moment in my life, and that lowest, lowest point for me was the thing that needed to happen for me to catapult me out of that state and out of that place in my life and really reach out for help. And so I did the next day and reached out to a therapist, and I said, "I need your help. I need to change my life." And so it took about six more months to get out of that relationship, but when I did, after a brief grief period, I went into a deep introspection and personal development and spiritual awakening and ownership of my part of that relationship not working and where I was in my life at that moment, the condition of my life, and I decided in that moment, I want an extraordinary life. I don't want to live this way, and so I really delved deep into everything that I could get my hands on to read and to watch and to attend and listen to, and what was happening to me, Bob, was I really starting to heal in a very profound way and live in a very different way than I had been living before. I was alive. I was awake. My spirit was nurtured and felt loved and what it was that I came to was I had no self love. I had such low self-esteem and low self love for myself, and I developed it in this process.   I started writing a lot. Getting all these downloads, and so I would get this hits of inspiration in the middle of the night, and I would write poetry stories, and one night, in August of 2013, I woke up with a poem I Have Today in my head, and so I got up. I wrote it down right away, and it was I have today to love and be loved. I have today to start fresh anew, and it went on and on and on, and when I finished the poem, I looked at it, and I said, "This is way more than a poem. This is a movement. This is what God was talking to me about that night in the bathroom in June of 2011."  And that's the moment that the idea of I Have Today was birthed where I really wanted to help and support mostly women because I knew so many women were feeling the same way I was, and I see this every day, so that was really where I started back in June of 2011 and where I am fast-forward to today.  I'm now living a life that I've completely manifested, and I've completely reinvented myself, and am living the life of my dreams really intentional and purposeful every single day, and now I help others to do the same thing. Dr. Bob: Wow. I don't know that there's really another word that would actually be appropriate right now, but wow. I mean, you shared this with me the first time we met, and I remember having this feeling, the same feeling, but I'd forgotten part of that story, and it just kind of came back to me powerfully. So number one. Good for you. Phenomenal how beautiful that you went from this place of despair where you were really on the brink of death to where you are now, and not just having sort of reinvented yourself and found your own bliss, but taking that experience and taking that incredible pain that you were going through and using that to fuel the career that has now, I'm sure, been able to inspire and support many, many other people in finding their path out of that. Diane Forster: Yes. Dr. Bob: And not just taking people who are in despair and considering suicide, but taking people who are living an average life or what they feel is a mediocre life and being able to decide that they're going to have an extraordinary life too. Diane Forster: You said the magic word. It's a decision, and it is a choice, and it takes a lot of help. It takes a lot of support, but yes, it is something that you really have to decide for yourself, how do you want to live every day? How do you want to feel every day? And so along my path with it, I've developed a lot of different processes, a lot of three-step processes that I've made it easy for me to catch myself when I'm not living in the present moment and to help and support me on this journey to keep that positive momentum going every single day, moving it forward, feeling alive, feeling fulfilled, feeling the expansion and the growth and all of that. For me, I could've never imaged that my life would've taken the turn that it's taken, but I feel such fulfillment and joy every day helping and serving others to help them create the life of their dreams. Dr. Bob: Yeah. Well, so we were so aligned there, and what's interesting as well is that our journeys have been parallel. I don't remember ever being at that place of despair. I've been married for going on 30 years, and I love my wife more today than I did when we first got married, and I feel very incredibly blessed. It hasn't always been easy. I would be lying if I said that there haven't been challenges and struggles along the way, so I haven't had to deal with that, but I've had career burnout and stress and of course, my own struggles, and in 2011, is when I decided that I'd had enough of the life that I was living and settling for and decided that I needed more, and that's when I got inspired and started doing a lot of soul searching and a lot of reading and a lot of self development and became more spiritual and started on this journey, which has led me to the place where I am now. And then you mentioned August of 2013 as a ... What happened on August 13, remind me? Diane Forster: That was the birth of "I Have Today" when I wrote the poem. Dr. Bob: Okay. That's when you woke up with that poem. So, in April of 2013, just a couple months before that, I had my epiphany where I became very clear that I'm here to help people die, and from that moment on, providence

    34 分鐘
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In this podcast, we talk about life, death and everything in between. We'll explore how to age more gracefully, have meaningful conversations, and what you can do now to ensure the best possible end-of-life experience for yourself and your loved ones. Let's get friendlier with death.

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