The Clinical Guide to Supportive and Palliative Care for HIV/AIDS

A Clinical Guide to Supportive and Palliative Care for HIV/AIDS • Chapter 2: Overview of Clinical Issuespatients’ needs. As was written by Sheila Cassidy, a British hospice physician, in her memoirSharing the Darkness:26 picas“Slowly, I learn about the importance of powerlessness. I experience it in my ownlife and I live with it in my work. The secret is not to be afraid of it – not to runaway. The dying know we are not God. All they ask is that we do not desert them.” 61Or, as expressed in the often-cited phrase attributed to Edward Trudeau (the Canadian physicianin the early 20 th century credited with developing the sanitarium system for tuberculosiscare long before the advent of disease-specific chemotherapy), the goal of the clinician for thepatient with an incurable, progressive and terminal illness is: “To cure never, to treat sometimes,to comfort always.”32U.S. Department of Health and Human Services • Health Resources and Services Administration • HIV/AIDS Bureau