![\"Death](\"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/7b12292\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6048x4032+0+0\/resize\/840x560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F38%2F58%2F5e1fb9df48a4aa13942536cd4db1%2Fdeathdoula-12xx25-30.jpg\")
<\/p>\nWhen people first meet Tiffany Johnson, say at a party, one of two things tends to happen after she explains her line of work: They look for an excuse to leave or they share some of their most personal life details. Johnson is a death doula. Death concierge is another way to describe what she does. Her job is to help the dying (and their loved ones) navigate their final months and weeks of life. She also helps healthy people who wish to prepare for the inevitable. Not with medicine, but with almost everything else \u2014 from putting together a videotaped message for those left behind to deciding who should be in the room at the very end.<\/p>\n
\u201cDying is a process. It isn\u2019t just a thing that happens,\u201d said Tiffany Johnson, a \u201cdeath care concierge\u201d who provides non-medical support to help terminally ill patients transition to the end of life.<\/p>\n
Victor Hilitski\/For the Sun-Times<\/p>\n
Johnson has taken on a more public role of late, advocating for the so-called right-to-die legislation, which Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law Dec. 12. The law allows someone 18 or older to request a fatal medication; to be eligible, the person must have been diagnosed (by two physicians) with an illness expected to lead to death within six months. Among other things, physicians are required to confirm that a person requesting the medicine is \u201cof sound mind.\u201d And the physicians must also tell the patient about other end-of-life options. Patients must administer the life-ending drug themselves.<\/p>\n
End-of-life choices are important, Johnson said, because most of us won\u2019t die in an instant. \u201cDying is a process. It isn\u2019t just a thing that happens,\u201d she said. And that\u2019s where Johnson comes in. She charges $80 an hour for her services, but also says she has never turned someone away who can\u2019t afford to pay.<\/p>\n
Johnson, who lives in Oak Park, grew up in Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Superior. She was in sixth grade when her father had a \u201cmassive\u201d stroke. \u201cI watched my dad \u2026 slowly dying for seven years,\u201d she said. The experience didn\u2019t push her to hide from death; it helped her to embrace it. After spending many years as a massage therapist, Johnson got certified as a death doula in 2018. There\u2019s no national standard for the profession, and the industry is largely unregulated.<\/p>\n
One blustery day in early December, Johnson worked with Gina Orlando, 73, a Forest Park woman living with stage-four breast cancer. They sat opposite each other in armchairs in Johnson\u2019s home, originally a mail-order Sears kit house in the Dutch Colonial style. Johnson invited Orlando to share what\u2019s on her mind. Orlando said she is struggling to de-clutter so her possessions don\u2019t become a burden to her husband after she dies.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Victor Hilitski\/For the Sun-Times<\/p>\n
Doulas aren\u2019t new; the term comes from the Ancient Greek word for \u201cwoman\u2019s servant.\u201d But the specialization of professional doulas for the dying has only been around for the past 20 years or so, said Patty Brennan, a Michigan-based doula trainer and author of \u201cThe Doula Business Guide Workbook.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s the aging of the Baby Boomer group,\u201d Brennan said. \u201cThere\u2019s maybe more of a tendency in that generation to look for an alternative way of doing things. \u2026 Also realizing there are gaps in the system, where the family is left on their own with a lot of that care.\u201d Introduction to Death Doulas When people first meet Tiffany Johnson, say at a party, one of two things tends to happen after she explains her line of work: They look for an excuse to leave or they share some of their most personal life details. Johnson is a death doula. Death concierge is another way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35119,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-35118","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/cb57f17\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6048x3452+0+290\/resize\/1461x834!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2Fe6%2F55%2F363539db4fc2b127bd7072bae09a%2Fdeathdoula-12xx25-34.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35118"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35118"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35118\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35120,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35118\/revisions\/35120"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/chicago\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n<img class="Image" alt="Death Doula Provides Comfort as Illinois Law Shifts End-of-Life Care." srcset="https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/d589274\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6048×4032+0+0\/resize\/840×560!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2F35%2F68%2F4483b31b428f8f28ddffcaec597b%2Fdeathdoula-12xx25-37-1.jpg<\/a> 1x,https:\/\/cst.brightspotcdn.com\/dims4\/default\/44b769a\/2147483647\/strip\/true\/crop\/6048×4032+0+0\/resize\/1680×1120!\/quality\/90\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fchorus-production-cst-web.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com%2Fbrightspot%2<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"