Category: Palliative care

7 reflections on grief and personal loss as told by a medical student

Being a medical student during your clinical years imparts a certain feeling of invincibility. For many of us, this is our first-time taking care of patients. Our history-taking and physical exam skills are being honed like superpowers. Our clinical kn…

Proper endings like this feel right

He was a logical man. A northeast Ohio man. Who worked all his life and worked hard. I can see it in his hands. They are entirely calloused with traces of grease impervious even to pumice soap. A family man. His wife and sons and daughters are at bedsi…

We can’t deny death, even if it’s a colleague

Does care fall short or go higher when the patient is one of our own? It depends on who you ask: We, the medical team, believe we try hard for everyone, but go the extra mile when it’s one of our own. Perhaps to family/outsiders, we’re not …

When a wife won’t let her husband die

We were told to wear masks before entering this patient’s ICU room. Entering his room, you could smell his rotting flesh. He was 92 years old. His skin would slough off if you dared to bathe him. His decubitus ulcers were raging with infection. As long…

The medicine that defines hospice care

An excerpt from Death Is But a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life’s End. Published on February 11, 2020 by Avery, and imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2020 by William Hudson, LLC Dying…

I had to be there for this patient’s last breath

It’s the winter of 1993. A cold, snowy day. Windy. A blizzard. The phone rings. I’m not on call for my patients today — except for one. Daisy has been in my care since the early 1970s, and given the risk that she may suffer a serious downtu…

I had to be there for this patient’s last breath

It’s the winter of 1993. A cold, snowy day. Windy. A blizzard. The phone rings. I’m not on call for my patients today — except for one. Daisy has been in my care since the early 1970s, and given the risk that she may suffer a serious downtu…

Data mining, artificial intelligence, and angels of death

Google is universally well known as a search and advertising company. Now Google is tapping into the $3.5 trillion health care market. To compete with the Apple Watch, Google acquired Fitbit, the wearable exercise, heart rate and sleep tracking device….

Physician-assisted suicide is a collaborative process

Who remembers Jack Kevorkian, Doctor Death? He was found guilty in 1998 of second-degree murder. Still, it was because of his advocacy that the terminally ill patient’s right to die by physician-assisted suicide was propelled into the public aren…

How race plays a role in palliative care

“Black life remains unexpected.” I have been mulling over these words written by Ibram X. Kendi, in The Atlantic. This followed his piece exploring the “anniversary” of slavery in 2019. He experiences this 400-year marker both with hope and concern giv…