Today the founder and chief physician of the First Moscow hospice Vera Millionshikova would have turned 76 years old. “Pravmir” recalls the most important words of Vera.
Vera Millionshchikova. Photo: os.colta.ru
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- Correspondence with Galya
Death is a mystery, which everyone can understand
“Death is always terrible. I’m scared to death of death. Death is a mystery, which everyone can understand – from birth. Even a child, going to where the dead, the first to shout: “Mom! Mother!” but as you will see dead – stops. And it’s not that he suddenly saw the faces of adults. The fact that he understands that the Ordinance should happen in silence.”
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“It is not necessary to actively intervene in the process of dying — you can’t fix it. But you have to be there to take the hand, to touch, to sympathize. Think about what you need to cook soup, you just will not. Around bottled the importance of the moment — someone leaves, and you accompany him. Speaking is optional, you can just quietly puffing. The main thing that people felt that he was not alone. Because one is said to be very scary. But I can’t tell — never died”.
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“I feel without my doing not think”
One of the rules of the hospice – all care is free. Millionshtchikov and very closely monitored so that employees would not take the money. “They have to go to the house with a clear conscience and treat all patients, not to those who paid, – says the doctor. – So, they need to create the same level of life, so they don’t feel slighted”. Members of the First hospice do not pay the fare, eat for free at work, pay for utilities 50% less.
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“We were born to live and die, but only how to die – with dignity. Here the hospice is a worthy death, if there is a necessity”.
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“I live for the day. I always want to say, “Wait and see”. When they say: “Vera, come join us in March next year”, I think to myself, darn, I wish I had your worries! Who knows what will happen with you and with me in March next year. But I always promise to come. The lack of plans takes the fun out of life – you live here and now and enjoy it”.
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“Live every day like the last: with all the beauty, fullness and grief. Even if you want to sleep and you have things to do, don’t put off until tomorrow anything — even if it is buying handbags or call a neighbor. To do something from which peace will evolve on your soul.”
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“Hospice is not a house of death and a decent life to the end”
“Right now we have a dead patient… So happened that he had to die of hunger. We offered him an operation, a gastrostomy, so he was fed through a tube in the stomach. He was so hungry, die of hunger is hard… And this stoma was imposed, he could not speak, covered in tubes, he showed signs thumb up: here’s what life now – I eat!”
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Vera Millionshchikova
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“In the West, the hospice – house of death. In England, for example, the patient is placed in hospice for 6 days before death. Put to die because people don’t want to see death at home. They have to death induced attitude. Dying relative at the hospice quickly, rather then to be cremated and “continue to live”.
We have differently. Many come to us at an early stage, then out, after an undetermined time, some come back to us. The first commandment of our hospice (16) States: “Hospice is not a house of death. It is a worthy life until the end. We work with real people. Only they die before we do””.
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“I can’t burn — it’s unnatural. I can Shine a soft long light, knowing that I was in the hospice there are students, assistants. And when my assistants are aware of this, as I think I am aware of, the hospice will remain at the proper height.
And if you are not aware — there will come a people who do not believe the words not backed by deeds — and the hospice will be transformed: the staff will all cynical, hypocritical, deceitful, krystee. Well, some time still will live coasting on its former reputation and… over. This should not happen. Nothing in the hospice should not sink into Oblivion, to go nowhere”.
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An excerpt of an interview from the archive of filmmaker Igor Shadkhan, 1994
“School for scandal” with Faith Millionshikova and Nytol Federmesser, 2008