The day began in Mom’s room with a 10:00 a.m. conference at Upper Valley Medical Center, west of Columbus, Ohio. In attendance were my 93-year-old mother Joanne (now in her third week of hospitalization), her palliative-care nurse Richard, her Ep…
Category: Palliative care
Avoiding late-stage dementia with advance directives for stopping eating and drinking
On October 1, 2019, Nevada began allowing individuals to avoid living in late-stage dementia. The new statute recognizes the legitimacy of an advance directive that instructs health care providers to stop hand feeding food and fluid by mouth. Individua…
The broader mission for hospice care
I remember it was raining outside when I told Ester she had metastatic stomach cancer. She cried, as her son sat silently holding one thin hand in two of his. After a while, she asked, how long did she have to live? I explained it depended on how we…
In India’s Burgeoning Pain Market, U.S. Drugmakers Stand To Gain
What began in India as a populist movement to bring inexpensive morphine to the diseased and dying poor has paved the way for a booming pain management industry. Now, new customers are being funneled to U.S. drugmakers bedeviled by a government crackdown back home.
The last massage of his life
Clutching my duffel bag under my rain jacket, I dash from my truck toward a house that was built by Frankie, the man I’m here to give the last massage of his life. I’ve been massaging people since I was five and have been a professional mas…
Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider: spotlight physician speaker
Physician Speaking by KevinMD is the only physician-run, all-physician speakers bureau. We are practicing physicians and experienced keynote speakers, highlighting both large-scale events and intimate day-long workshops. Today’s spotlight physician spe…
Kathy Brandt, A Hospice Expert Who Invited The World Into Her Own Last Days With Cancer, Dies
Kathy Brandt and her wife, Kim Acquaviva, national experts in hospice and palliative care, shared intimate details of Brandt’s experience with terminal cancer before her death Sunday.
A critical discussion is needed about planned death
“Planned death.” When you put it like that, this can only mean one of two things: suicide or murder. For most of us in medicine, the very idea of “planned death” seems safely outside our purview. After all, the bulk of medicine is concerned with stavin…
When the train comes for you
I found you standing on a platform. It was a foggy, damp morning, and your vision was obscured. People came and went, some with urgency, others not so much. Some people you knew, others were strangers. Your husband was usually nearby, often holding you…
The Talk Seniors Need To Have With Doctors Before Surgery
Surgeons are rethinking the old notions of “informed consent.” With older patients especially, a push is on to talk candidly about what a surgery will do, its risks and how it will affect their quality of life.
