Know the illness you face

When we are familiar with the patterns of the illness that afflicts us, we disarm our imaginings. Accurate knowledge of how a disease kills serves to free us from unnecessary terrors of what we might be fated to endure when we die. We may thus be better prepared to recognize the stations at which it is appropriate to ask for relief, or perhaps to begin contemplating whether to end the journey altogether.

Sherwin Nuland, How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), p. 143.