Chapter 7 discusses how to live with a life-threatening disease including coping, treatment decisions, and pain management. We have to decide when and how we want to say goodbye to our loved ones, like the individuals who threw themselves a “going away party,” whether we want to utilize pain medications that may incapacitate us, and whether we want to prolong our life with treatments that may reduce the quality of our last days. Essentially, this chapter emphasizes the personal decisions that each individual has to make when faced with death. 

For this assignment you will begin to consider these personal decisions. Looking at Table 7-2 “Tasks in Coping with Life-Threatening Illness” on page 262 of your text, select one different task from each of the phases: acute, chronic, and terminal. Once you select each of your tasks, briefly describe the task and then discuss how you would carry out that coping task.