ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an account of the author's encounter with Mrs. Sims, an eighty-six-year-old black, extremely frail woman with advanced bladder cancer, admitted to the hospital by her sixty-year-old nephew, Mr. Reese, and her cousin, Mrs. Jones. Often in the case of terminal illness, the greater crisis to be dealt with is the family’s interactional process more than the individual’s personal reaction to dying. The home environment facilitates such successful crisis intervention. The author realizes that his work with the hospital home care team and the various groups in the community were vital to the success of his interventions.
