Welcome:

Here you will find the somewhat random musings of a pediatrician in Watkinsville, Georgia. Some of my posts will involve medical topics, some political (maybe), and some spiritual. I will probably throw in an occasional comment about UGA athletics, or some other sports-related topic, as well.

Your comments are invited.

Rhinos

Rhinos
Walking with Rhinos

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Creative Visualization for Seniors

You may have read my post about my paternal grandfather (Granddaddy) and one of the events that happened to him during WWII ("It's raining...mules?").  I thought today that I'd write about my maternal grandfather, whom we called PaPa.  PaPa passed away about 2 1/2 years ago from lung cancer.  I have written about his passing in a previous post ("Cancer").

I thought I'd post a funny story about PaPa tonight (there are a few, so maybe I'll post more of them in the future).


We were visiting him at his home one night in early January of 2010 and he started having a lot of pain and difficulty breathing.  The hospice nurse was called.  She came over and tried to work with him on relaxing.  She told him to "visualize being in a peaceful place, like the beach".  He either didn't get the "visualizing" idea or pretended not to.  


The nurse told him to imagine he was in a peaceful place.  He responded, "I can imagine a lot of places."  Mom then tried to explain and said, "Pretend like you are at the beach".  He then, despite his pain, laid back, closed his eyes, put a smile on his face and pretended to be holding a drink in his hand.  At that moment, especially when he had been struggling so much with his pain, it was a hilarious thing to do.

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