caringspain.com

Caring Together acknowledges with thanks the cash flow resulting from the efforts of Steve & Thea Butler and their friends, who empty collection boxes and run market stalls on our behalf in the Torrevieja area. You may contact them on 96 676 1944 to offer your help.

We’d like to applaud the example of the late CASS BROWN, a cancer patient who sadly died in early January 2007.            Cass published a book last year, putting into print the blog he used to record his experience as a patient and a person over years of treatment.

He refused to be downhearted, regarded every day as a bonus and gives doctors the credit for being human beings. The book, CANCERGIGGLES, ISBN 0 9551988 0 1 , is easy to find on the Amazon site. We recommend it strongly to carers who are nervous about chatting with patients whose illness is not going to go away.

His blog www.cancergiggles.blog-city.com is well worth a visit. It’s not too much to say that it may help some cancer sufferers to enjoy life despite their cancer. - It certainly convinced us of the value of blogging.

Thanks to Cass,   Caring Together’s president has started to blog at henry.blog-city.com.  On that site he is free to express not only the ideas of Caring Together but his private views as well.  And you can comment - answer back if you like - on line.

The website you are viewing is the responsibility of Asociación Caring Together. The president’s blog leaves him free to say exactly what he wishes to say as a private individual. They run pretty much in parallel when it comes to palliative care !

Caring Together has been providing palliative care services on Costa Blanca since 1996. We very much value your help.

PRESS RELEASE. Date of issue 21-07-07.

CHANGING DOMICILE TO THE HEREAFTER.

An occasional column from Asociación CARING TOGETHER.

As an organization concerned with the promotion and provision of palliative care we have never found an acceptable way of using unqualified volunteers directly at the bedsides of our patients. Now, the possibility is drawing closer.

On 5th July our Hon. Vice-president José Antonio and Hon. Secretary Francisca Dolores were among approximately 800 delegates at a presentation in the main conference hall of the Ministerio de Sanidad y Consumo in Madrid of the latter’s new plans for care of the dying.

The presentation was of a new booklet of 160 pages entitled ”Estrategia en Cuidados Paliativos del Servicio Nacional de Salud, 2007.” It reiterates the Ministry’s long-held view that palliative care teams should be formed by hospitals to work in the community, visiting terminally ill patients in their own homes. It’s fair to say that this is beginning to happen in our area but that very much more needs to be done!

Here we’ll mention just two of the new ideas drawn from the wealth of evidence-supported material in this top-level guide.

It is intended that the first line of doctors - the GPs – should all receive special training in palliative care, for doctors do not like death any more than the rest of us, and in the Ministry’s view do not receive enough information or resources to help their patients as life draws to a close.

The second idea is that Associations such as CARING TOGETHER should be empowered to train volunteers to sit with patients and listen to whatever they want to talk about. For the Ministry believes that it is often easier for a patient to talk to a stranger about his pain and other problems than to talk to those of his immediate family circle.

It is emphasised that such volunteers must be very carefully selected and, once trained, should they should form part of the team bringing palliative care to each patient.

Before everyone rushes to offer to form a continuing friendly relationship with strangers who are dying, we must say that Caring Together is not yet ready to offer suitable training to such volunteers. What will be required is a Ministry-approved course with a diploma for those who succeed in meeting the course requirements…………………

……………CARING TOGETHER has, in the past, been mistaken for a business because our website is www.caringspain.com . We never wanted to be a DOT. COM because we are a not-for-profit non-governmental-organization (ONG). But www.caringspain.com was the best domain name we could find – until last week.

Now, with the recent creation of a new Registry of European Websites, we have been able to register the domain name www.caringtogether.eu. As we feel truly European, we believe that to have reserved this domain name will make our intentions clearer as time goes by.

Sometime soon we hope to transfer all our Internet material to the new

location ! Can any reader tell us how to? Until we learn the trick, you’ll still find us at www.caringspain.com .

Actually we are entirely dependent on the donations of wellwishers and volunteer fundraisers in order to move forward. Please help us add quality to the end of life by supporting our work.

BARCELONA. Barcelona makes the best provision for palliative care in all Spain – according to the email of a doctor working there, griten in reply to an enquiry from a lady in Argentina who was worried about a friend living in Barcelona. The doctor’s advice was to consult the patient’s médico de cabacera (GP) to find the appropriate service.

If you have a similar worry about someone living a bit nearer to Alicante, CARING TOGETHER will try to make suitable contacts for you if we are unable to send help to the required address . Just email info@caringspain.com or phone +34 965894240.

For urgent questions about palliative care, please call 619 216 270.

www.caringspain.com info@caringspain.com