and was responsive, in pain, alone and, I assume, very scared, I asked my instructor if I could sit with him and talk, read and listen, and give him the backrub that we students had learned just one week prior to our clinical rotation and were supposed to practice on our patients, after lunch or before they went to sleep at night. She told me no, he was not a candidate for the backrub because he was dying. And die he did, just a few hours later. Alone. In pain. Scared. Untouched. I cried all the way through, but was grateful for the postmortem care, when I finally did get to touch him and say goodbye. I think I cried for an entire week, and questioned why I wanted to be a nurse. If we couldn’t touch or connect in some way with someone who was suffering, what was the point? Stay away In the 1980s, in the area of Pennsylvania where I grew up, most people didn’t like to talk openly about suffering and dying, and early in my nursing career I KATARZYNABIALASIEWICZ/THINKSTOCK Communicate Care through Touch by Lindy Roussel, L.P.N., L.M.T., B.C.T.M.B. Massage for the Frail and Dying | www.massagemag.com | September 2015 | MASSAGE Magazine | 39 noticed that once someone was sick and got to the point of suffering and was told he or she was going to die, family and friends didn’t want to see him like that or wanted to remember her like she was before she got sick, and drifted away. We young nurses, fresh out of school and ready to save the world, wanted to help everyone, but never seemed to have enough time to spend with our patients in need of our time, and the senior nurses warned us not to get too close to our patients. Because many people were afraid of sickness—some cancers were still thought of as contagious and AIDS had come to town—death was thought of as a Bad Thing. Not only should we not touch someone who was very sick, we should stay away. The fact that death was a part of life was not taught in our schools, growing up, or talked about within our family units. Animals that passed away “went to a farm,” and relatives “went to heaven.” And because of that, there was a whole lot more suffering going on. Although I knew it was wrong, and didn’t feel good about it, I too found myself fearing and avoiding human suffering and death, and eventually worked at jobs such as the Visiting Nurse Association and a mental health facility, hoping I wouldn’t have to witness death or dying. It worked out pretty well until my dear friend Sue found out she had cancer in 2003, and died six months later. Sue’s advice Sue asked me to help take care of her, and of course I did, but watching her and her family suffer made me hate and fear death and dying even more. When I look back on that time, I realize Sue did me a great favor. She challenged me by teaching me things I didn’t want to know, and asking me to do difficult tasks that eventually re-routed my life’s path and put me where I am today. One thing I remember was the time, a few weeks before she passed away, when she asked me to set up a professional massage for her. I was doing my best with my nursing backrubs and such, but she wanted the whole experience, because she never had one before, and wanted to before she died. I called every spa, clinic and independent massage therapist within 25 miles, and not one would touch her. I don’t blame them a bit. Back then we didn’t know what we know now about cancer and touch, and nobody wanted to hurt her—but I was devastated that I wasn’t able to do this one thing for my friend whose dying wish was to be touched by someone who knew what they were doing, wouldn’t be upset if she cried and who didn’t wear gloves to touch her like the hospice people did. A few days before Sue passed away, she looked at me and said, “You should learn to be a massage therapist and work for hospice. You give great backrubs and you care.” So I did. No age limits Who am I to go against a dying woman’s last wish? I took this as an opportunity to rectify myself for failing miserably on her second-to-last wish; I got a nursing job at a new, local hospice, where I learned that death is actually not a Bad Thing, went to massage therapy school, and when I graduated at the age of 41, secured a job with another hospice as a nurse-massage therapist, and immersed myself in learning how to touch the medically frail and dying. At Sue’s funeral, I heard many people commenting that Sue was too young to get sick and pass away. As children and young adults, many of us think of people who are medically frail as the elderly, weak with old-age maladies such as heart disease, breathing difficulties and brittle bones; possibly with some dementia, lying in bed or sitting in a wheelchair. Dying is for the old, as well—grandparents, elderly aunts and uncles, possibly a friend of our parents. Then we learn, as we age, that sickness and death have no age limits. Aging America The oldest baby boomers, born between 1946 and 1964, will begin turning 70 in 2016. The youngest are in their 50s. There are a lot of us: more than 75 million, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2030, “more than 20 percent of U.S. residents are projected to be aged 65 and over, compared with 13 percent in 2010 and 9.8 percent in 1970,” according to the Census Bureau’s report, The Baby Boom Cohort in the United States: 2012 to 2060. A few weeks before my friend Sue passed