Man, Dying Is Hard Work Bill Hartfield

By Barbara Hartfield R.N.

It is a guide to empowerment of the mind, body and spirit. It will take you step by step through the dying process by eliminating the fear factor. By keeping track of what will happen and when you will become an advocate for yourself or your loved one, ensuring a positive experience free from guilt and emotional pain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765234723

Barbara Hartfield R.N.

Barbara Hartfield is a registered nurse and psychic medium. She has been passionate about death and dying for thirty years. She has helped hundreds of loved ones come together to find peace, love, and joy during their journey to enlightenment.

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Copyright © 2021 Barbara Hartfield R.N.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

Balboa Press

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are

models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3473-0 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3471-6 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-7652-3472-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022917309

Balboa Press rev. date: 09/23/2022

Contents

Where It Began

Instinct

Love and Miracles

Become an Advocate

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross

Your Rights

POLST and Advance Directive

Medical Power of Attorney (MPOA)

Physical and Psychological Pain

Hospice

Comfort Care versus Palliative Care versus Hospice

Pain Medication

The Process of Dying

Grief

My Parents

My Mother

Aubre

Meeting in Heaven

Nursing Facility Information

Glossary of Terms

References

About the Author

Dedicated to my parents,

Bill & Jeanne(Loer) Hartfield,

my great-niece Aubre & those we have lost in 2022.

I want to thank my family for having faith in me to complete this project and helping me with the title and cover design. Thank you to my lifelong friends for letting me bounce my ideas off you. Everyone’s support gave me the push I needed to finish this for my mother, who wanted me to share my stories of working with hospice clients. Thank you to my nephew for letting me share Aubre’s story. Lastly, to my hospice clients and families, who allowed me to care for them and teach them that even though their journeys will be filled with emotions, painful decisions, laughter, and sorrow, they were in total control of their experiences. Names and locations mentioned in this book have been changed for HIPPA.

Introduction

I wrote this book to be a practical guide, with stories from my hospice days. I hope to get families and friends to come together to talk about death, explore their mortality, and know that death is not a dirty word to fear but something to embrace. I hope to teach about and explore the dying process from my experiences as a psychic medium, my spirit guides, and through Jesus for the blessed occasion. Dying is a spiritual process that does not care about your faith, age, gender, skin color, or how much money you do or do not have. Religion is a comfort before, during, and after death, but once in heaven there is no religion. Everyone is equal just as Jesus was teaching.

Also throughout the book, you will be reading poems by a young man of age sixteen. Andrew Michael Kippley wrote the verses to deal with his impending death. His family put them together in a book, In My Own Words, so he will never be forgotten. I was permitted to use these poems by his grandmother. Andrew wrote from his soul the words that no one ever wants to say. His brave, courageous battle with cancer left him on September 25, 2009. We are blessed enough to be reading his words in 2022.

Writing my story from the beginning is an essential aspect of the book because it explains how I got started as a psychic medium, including who and what influenced me to become a nurse at such a young age. Realizing that everyone’s journey is different, I integrated actual events into examples in the hopes you can relate to them. For this book, the terms you will see often are resident, client, and patient. A resident is a person living in a skilled nursing facility. Clients refer to those living at home receiving home care or hospice care, or residing in an assisted living facility with the patient receiving treatment in the hospital.

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Where It Began

When I was six, my father moved our family to a big, green Victorian home with land so he could buy horses. To me, it was big. It meant lots of room to run around with my siblings. The haunting took a couple of months to start, and when it did, the haunting never stopped.

The staircase to the second floor was narrow, fanning out in certain places before getting to the second floor where all the bedrooms were. I shared a room with my sister, and my brothers shared a room. The third floor was one sizeable, empty floor until it was filled with storage. That ample space filled with junk became our playroom. We would play hide and seek; it had the best places to hide. After a couple of weeks of playing up in the attic, it became clear there was something different about the air. It became heavy and it was hard to breath. As kids we didn’t realize it was associated with anything, but we stopped playing up there.

When running through the house, I would hear my name being called: Barbara. I stopped because I thought it was one of my siblings or my mom. I looked in the dining room, and I would hear it coming from the TV room. As the weeks passed, the frequency increased, though my little brother had encountered strange noises at night, I became the primary focus of its daily torment. The day was terrifying, but then the ghost started the torment at night.

Something would grab my feet at night, pull the covers off, or pull my hair. I was scared to death, and I wouldn’t go to bed by myself. My mother would let me lay on the floor in front of the TV until everyone went to bed.

One Sunday afternoon, my parents left to look at horses. My sister was left in charge of us for the afternoon. My parents hadn’t gotten down the driveway, and she was on the phone calling her friends over. To irritate my brother and his friends, she locked them out of the house so they couldn’t cause problems. Those boys were determined to get into the house by climbing the oak tree outside my sister’s bedroom window. I sat at the kitchen table, watching my brother’s friend climb the tree and jump onto the second-floor balcony. Now in the house, my brother’s friend unlocked the door for the rest of them. My brother came up with a bright idea. His idea was to take the BB guns, go to the third floor, and kill the ghost. The four boys climbed the winding staircase to the second floor, then started up the third-floor stairs. We heard a loud bang. I jumped in my seat. It was so loud, and it scared me.

Then I heard what sounded like animals running through the house. Every pound of their feet shook the floor, then the table where I was sitting. All four boys ran past me in the kitchen, and they didn’t stop to open the back screen door; they all tried to get through it simultaneously, ripping that door off its hinges. My father was upset when he came home to find the screen door on the ground, and made all four of them pay for it.

After that, we all knew the house was haunted. The ghost was in the attic, and