Vailia Dennis, 87, who refused open-heart surgery, delights in the warmth of sunlight on her hands. She has used her extra time to connect with family – and the Internet.

FOR the last couple of years, Vailia Dennis, 87, has wondered if there existed, on the face of the earth, even one other human being who thought as she did about death. Then she read about Art Buchwald, the newspaper columnist who died at the age of 81 on Jan. 18, nearly a year after he opted out of further medical treatment, preferring to put himself in the hands of fate.

At last, Dennis thought. A soul mate. “I read about Art Buchwald and I discovered that we were like blood-related creatures,” she says. Buchwald refused kidney dialysis. He went on to outlive doctors’ predictions by almost a year, time he spent holding court with the fabulous, the famous and the powerful, and by all accounts, having a great time.

Dennis refused open-heart surgery, enrolled in care at the San Diego Hospice & Palliative Care and, within the familiarity of her San Diego home, has outlived predictions of her demise so far by two years. “This has been the most comfortable, the most interesting, time of my life,” she says.

Dennis doesn’t run into a lot of people who understand her decision to say “No, thank you,” to medical intervention, but those who do are out there — more of them, it seems, each year. About 1.2 million patients, 80% of them older than 65, received hospice services in 2005, an increase of 150,000 from the year before and up from 210,000 in 1990, according to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.

Source: LA Times