Sanford Wood

Sanford shared his story in August of 2024.

You know the expression “opposites attract”? That was the case for Pam and me. I was a college professor; she was a high school dropout. She loved country music; I liked grand opera. I was more reserved; she made friends everywhere she went. 

By the time Pam died, I felt like I had been watching her die for years. She was worn out with illness and had lost the ability to enjoy her life. She was ready to go. 

Pam was a strong and healthy woman working two jobs as a nurse’s aide and home health worker when I met her. But in her 40s, Pam had a stroke that partially disabled her and from which she never fully recovered. She was later diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and then, a long-time smoker, Pam developed COPD. Her COPD and fibromyalgia contributed to a gradual decline, her health deteriorating to the point where she was on oxygen all the time and frequently fell trying to get from her bed to the portable toilet right next to her. 

The robust person I had married no longer had the strength or stamina to do much at all anymore. 

Several years before Pam passed away, she and I talked about what we wanted for our end-of-life care and created living wills. We were not afraid of dying, but we knew the process can be painful and scary, and neither of us wanted to be kept alive by artificial means. Most of all Pam just wanted to be kept comfortable, as she had a low pain tolerance. Her experience in home health had taught her a lot. She’d been with many people while they died, and often she saw situations where the dying person had been ready to die for some time, but their family members kept them alive. 

We both agreed that we didn’t want what Pam had seen with some of her patients. As long as life was good, we wanted to keep going. But when it got to the point that we had no quality of life, we were ready to die. We were both strong in our faith and had made our peace with God many years before. 

When the end came for Pam, it came a bit unexpectedly. She had been receiving hospice care at home for months in 2017 when one night she was smoking in bed, and her bedding and nightgown caught fire. She was burned very badly. Normally, someone in this situation would be taken to a hospital, but Pam did not want to go to a hospital. She knew the default at a hospital would be keeping her alive over comfort care. So instead, Pam went to a hospice facility for wound care and pain relief. 

A few days later, I got a call that I needed to come see Pam first thing in the morning. Her condition had changed, the nurse said. 

When I arrived, Pam was in a state where she wasn’t speaking. She looked at me, though, with what appeared to be a look of recognition. I talked to her, because I’d been told that hearing continues even after a person can no longer speak. And I continued to talk to her through the night and the next day, assuring her I was there and wasn’t leaving her. 

Pam died at the hospice center. It was what she wanted. For her last hours, she received comfort care, and I was with her. If she had been at a hospital, they probably would have tried to save her, and she didn’t want to be saved. 

I think often about the novel Gulliver’s Travels, where Gulliver visits a country of people who could not die. But they continued to age, their bodies deteriorating. To me, that sums up a lot of our era of modern medicine. I’m 84 years old now, and my health is very good. I still maintain a large garden and do my own yard work. And yet I keep my advance directive updated and have talked with my doctor and children about it, because if I’m dying, I want the kind of end-of-life care that Pam had.