Final comforts

China's population is rapidly aging. In 2017, the National Health Commission released a guide for palliative care and a list of the first five pilot cities.

Beijing Haidian Hospital became one of China's first to provide professional palliative care in hematology and oncology in July of that year. And Qin Yuan, a professor of palliative care at the hospital, happened to live in the same apartment building as Xu's parents.

Xu learned for the first time about palliative care and the new unit at BHH from Qin's WeChat post: "At palliative care wards, terminal cancer patients can relieve pain and die with decency in the warm company of hospice caregivers, family members and friends."

In 2018, Xu drafted a will clarifying what medical care she doesn't want if she's terminally ill — intubation, treatment and examination that causes severe pain, to be kept alive in a vegetative state and so on.

In July 2019, Xu became a volunteer photographer for BHH's hospice. Before she stepped into the palliative care ward, her body tensed up when she thought of the miserable scenes she'd see.

She forced herself to go forward.

To her surprise, when she pushed open the door, she saw a sunny room where flowers were blooming in the small pots on the windowsill. She heard volunteers greet each patient warmly, and they responded with friendliness.

She saw a veteran volunteer holding a patient's hand, casting cherishing looks at him while talking with him. Other volunteers were helping patients wash and cut their hair, as if they were family or old friends.

There was no wailing, no unbearable suffering. Every patient seemed relaxed in the company of at least one family member.

Xu was amazed by such a warm scene, so full of love, but also felt confused at how the volunteers did what they did.

"The patients here were lucky. At the darkest times of their lives, there were people holding their hands, caring for them, loving them and accompanying them to face their deaths. They were safe. They were not lonely," she says.

Xu decided that she would receive palliative care at the end of her life. She at first volunteered as a caregiver out of selfish intentions — she wanted to secure a bed for herself in the future. And she also wanted to help those patients and to reduce her own guilt.

However, becoming a qualified palliative caregiver requires mastery of various kinds of knowledge.

They need proper training to better understand life and death from philosophical and psychological perspectives so that they won't fear death or feel too sad or frustrated when the patients they care for — and about — die.

"The lectures about life and death that I attended saved me. It helped me see my mother's death from a new perspective and rid myself of the deep sorrow, self-blame and depression I'd felt," she says.

"Death is not the end of a life but the start of a new journey. Such an idea helps console many people, including doctors who have to face many deaths every day."