A Wish Fulfilled

In October 2017, PALCARE put in an extra effort to help realize a patient’s last wish, which was such a satisfying experience!

One of our patients, a young man from Dharavi, Mumbai, whose family included a young wife, two small children, elderly parents and two siblings, and had been in our care for twenty months, expressed a desire to go on one last family outing, before he passes on.

This was towards end of August 2017 when the patient’s parents were out of town. When his condition started to deteriorate around mid-September, and we knew we had very little time to help him with his aspiration, in late September, as soon as his parents returned to the city, PALCARE made preparations for such an outing. We got the patient a wheel chair, and with the help of V Care Foundation, another NGO, we organized for a mini-van and made sure that the family could make a trip to the Gateway of India and have a meal in a restaurant nearby. This was on Sunday, 1st October 2017.

The patient was very content to have had the outing, something that he had been so keen to experience. The next day, he confided in the PALCARE team that he now felt at peace. Three days later, the patient died peacefully – with his last wish fulfilled.

Palliative care indeed offers a holistic approach in which a patient’s emotional, social and spiritual needs are all tended to in order to ensure that the patient can live in dignity until the end and experience a sense of peace.

*Patients’ names, on this and following pages, have been changed to protect their identity.