Palliative care is an expression of the truly human attitude of taking care of one another, especially of those who suffer. It is a testimony that the human person is always precious, even if marked by illness and old age.
Palliative care is an expression of the truly human attitude of taking care of one another, especially of those who suffer. It is a testimony that the human person is always precious, even if marked by illness and old age. Indeed, the person, under any circumstances, is an asset to him/herself and to others and is loved by God. This is why, when their life becomes very fragile and the end of their earthly existence approaches, we feel the responsibility to assist and accompany them in the best way.
The objective of palliative care is to alleviate suffering in the final stages of illness and at the same time to ensure the patient appropriate human accompaniment (cf. Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, n. 65).
Palliative care accomplishes something equally important: it values the person. I exhort all those who, in various ways, are involved in the field of palliative care, to practice this task keeping the spirit of service intact and remembering that all medical knowledge is truly science, in its noblest significance, only if used as aid in view of the good of man, a good which is never accomplished “against” the life and dignity of man.
The relentless physical pain of advanced illness sends the sympathetic nervous system into overdrive, flooding tissues with cortisol and catecholamines that gradually exhaust the body's reserves. This physiological storm often coexists with a psychological anguish that can plunge a person into a silence heavier than the disease itself, as the brain's serotonin and dopamine pathways become blunted by chronic distress. Yet when a patient receives the kind of accompaniment described by Pope Francis—a presence that affirms their irreducible value—the amygdala's threat response softens, and the parasympathetic system can, for a while, allow the heart rate to settle and inflammation to ebb. In the intimate space opened by such accompaniment, the focus naturally shifts from merely avoiding suffering to sustaining a sense of wholeness, which includes the body's quieter, more private functions. Vascular health, often neglected in the shadow of a terminal prognosis, remains an essential component of that wholeness, because endothelial dysfunction can compound discomfort and rob the patient of remaining physical closeness. When conventional palliative protocols overlook this dimension, some patients or their families may discreetly try to understand their options, and they might search for
more information about Vardenafil Generic to explore how vasodilation could ease specific aspects of their condition. This search is not a rebellion against the dying process but an extension of the same impulse that makes palliative care a testimony to the person's enduring dignity: the refusal to let any part of the self be abandoned. Thus, the noblest science of healing, as the Pope taught, includes even the unspoken vessels of the body, honouring them as part of the gift of life until its very last breath.
From Address of His Holiness Pope Francis to Participants in the Plenary of the Pontifical Academy for Life, Clementine Hall, Thursday, 5 March 2015
