| active dying | The end phase of a terminal illness when death is expected to occur within hours or a few days and involving a set of physical signs or symptoms usually associated with the period just before death occurs.
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| acute pain | A biological signal of the potential for or extent of injury that can serve as a protective mechanism prompting the sufferer to remove or withdraw from the source of pain.
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| adjunctive therapy | A therapy used to counteract the side effects of the primary treatment or relieve other symptoms.
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| ars moriendi | (1) Art of dying. (2) The notion that there is a "right" way to die that applies to everyone.
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| biopsy | The surgical removal of a small amount of tissue for diagnostic purposes.
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| cancer | A condition in which there is a proliferation of cells capable of invading normal tissues, which unchecked (malignant) can be lethal.
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| chemotherapy | The treatment of disease using chemicals (drugs).
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| chronic pain | As contrasted with acute pain, chronic pain usually lasts longer than three to six months.
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| closed awareness | An awareness context in which a person with a terminal prognosis is not aware of his or her impending death and, although others may know, there is no communication about this prospect.
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| complementary therapy | A therapy used along with primary or conventional therapies to help alleviate symptoms and restore healthful functioning.
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| coping potency | The capacity to maintain a sense of self-worth, set goals and strive to meet them, sustain hope for the future, and exercise choice with an awareness of one’s power to interactively engage with the environment; also known as resiliency.
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| coping strategies | As contrasted with defense mechanisms, coping strategies involve conscious, purposeful efforts intentionally directed toward solving a problem or establishing control over a stressful situation. They include emotion-focused coping to regulate the level of distress, problem-focused coping to deal with the problem itself, and meaning-based coping to maintain a sense of positive well-being.
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| defense mechanisms | As contrasted with coping strategies, defense mechanisms occur unintentionally and without conscious effort or awareness; they function to change a person’s internal psychological states, not the external reality. Such mechanisms may be adaptive in dealing with a stressful situation in the short term, but can hinder mobilization of resources and taking appropriate action over the longer term.
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| dying trajectory | The duration and progression of a disease or injury toward death. Two contrasting patterns are (1) the lingering trajectory, when life fades away slowly from a disease and (2) the expected quick trajectory such as occurs in emergencies that result in sudden death.
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| ethnomedicine | Methods of holistic medical treatment based on indigenous or folk beliefs.
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| five stages | A model of emotional and psychological response to life-threatening illness devised by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and consisting of denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.
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| life-threatening illness | An illness that potentially may cause the patient’s death.
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| magical thinking | (1) The notion that one’s angry thoughts or feelings can cause harm or even death to others. (2) The notion that one is responsible for bringing an illness on oneself even though there is no evidence for making this assumption.
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| metastasis | The spread of multiple sites of cancer additional to the primary or original site.
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| middle knowledge | An aspect of coping with life-threatening illness that involves fluctuation between acceptance and denial as patients and those close to them seek a balance between acknowledging the reality of the patient’s condition and sustaining hope for recovery.
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| mutual pretense | An awareness context in which individuals know that a patient’s condition or prognosis is likely to be terminal, but everyone, including the patient, avoids direct communication about this prognosis and instead acts to sustain the illusion that the patient is getting well; also known as conspiracy of silence.
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| object of hope | A focus of hopefulness that changes over time during the course of a terminal illness, from the early hope that symptoms do not mean anything serious, to hope for a cure, to hope for more time, to hope for a pain-free and peaceful death.
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| open awareness | An awareness context in which the prospect of an individual’s dying from terminal illness is acknowledged and discussed openly.
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| pain management | The treatment of pain by attending to its severity, location, quality, duration, course, and meaning to the patient, among other factors. Effective treatment generally occurs in a stepwise approach that begins with simple non-opiod pain medications and, if necessary, progressively moves to more powerful drugs.
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| prognosis | The expected course and duration of a disease.
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| remission | Temporary relief or disappearance of evident active disease, occurring either spontaneously or as the result of therapy.
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| social death | A pattern of avoidance stemming from the confrontation with mortality represented by life-threatening illness that leads people to abandon seriously ill patients and treat them as non-persons.
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| suffering | Distress endured as a result of disability or because of fear or anxiety about impending and unavoidable loss, including death.
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| suspected awareness | An awareness context in which a person suspects that his or her prognosis involves death, but this suspicion is not confirmed by those who know the truth.
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| symbolic healing | Therapies that evoke symbolic meanings that are significant to the patient in achieving their anticipated effects; examples include faith healing, supernatural healing, and folk healing.
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| terminality | A state relating to the final stages of a fatal disease or the patterns and processes associated with the end of life.
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| total pain | Physical, psychological, social, and spiritual components of a person’s experience of pain.
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| unorthodox treatment | In contrast to adjunctive and complementary therapies, methods of treatment that the medical establishment considers unproved or harmful.
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| visualization | A mind-body intervention in which a patient employs imagery or similar creative techniques as a complement to conventional therapy or to help restore well-being; in conjunction with chemotherapy, for example, a patient might imagine the drug working inside his or her body to diminish the cancerous cells.
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