On a cold evening in early March, my grandpa and I queued outside a nursing home in rural California. He pulled an insulated lunchbox, filled with hot chai and pureed rotis, to his chest and sighed. There are at least eight families in front of us, and…
COVID-19 has exposed us to a wide variety of different stressors. In the short term, our stress response is useful as it helps us respond quickly and effectively. But when the stress lasts longer, we have to identify and acknowledge the “downside” risk…
I am not afraid of being dead. Our four grown children are thriving, each in their own way making the world better. If I am wrong in my faith that Jesus is preparing a wonderful place for me, I will never know it. I do dread the process of dying, and C…
The lack of adequate supplies of PPE is deplorable, inconceivable. This has been made abundantly clear through both social media and traditional media. Post after post on various social media outlets have exposed the appalling shortages and, at times…
Coronavirus. Doctors. Nurses. PPE. Social distancing. Sound familiar? Our entire conversation about the COVID-19 pandemic surrounds those words and phrases. We see celebrities, companies, coworkers, family members, and friends donating PPE and money to…
I’m a palliative care chaplain who provides spiritual support to patients with serious, life-changing, and for some, life-threatening, illnesses. A common story they tell is an illness, like a storm, blew them off their life’s map. They fi…
Come with me on this journey, this very ancient journey. To experience the age-old story of a very modern foe. This foe is invisible; it is neither living nor dead. You cannot smell it, and you cannot taste it. While it is not alive, it can become aliv…
The unspoken culture in medicine has been that to maintain objective professionalism – some measure of distance is encouraged between the clinician and the patient. From anatomy lab, students are encouraged to forget patients as fellow human bein…
The hurricane made landfall during the early morning hours. When I woke up, all I saw was devastation. Highway 288 transformed into a lake. The bayou running underneath was completely flooded with water spilling into the roads. The park, a place where …
An excerpt from Nurses are Nuts. The pharmacy department plays a vital role in hospitals. They prepare and dispense medications. Sometimes the pharmacist will receive an order from the doctor on a med whose written dosage he is not sure of. In some cas…
