end of life Archives

A Patient’s Gift

Matthew Gesner June 20, 2025 7 Comments

“Thank you for these past couple of days.”

A simple sentence, yet one that forever changed my perspective on end-of-life care.

A faint beeping noise echoed in my room as my eyes slowly opened; it was 5:00 AM. I glanced out my window. The sun had yet to rise, but the darkness and silence were comforting in their own way. After breakfast, I got ready and headed out to the hospital where I was doing my residency training in family medicine.

The crisp morning air woke me up, and the drive to the hospital was no different from usual. Little did I know that the rest of the day would show me what it truly means to be a physician.

A Final Concert in the PICU

Kalei R.J. Hosaka May 30, 2025 17 Comments

I learned of Alex’s death from an attending physician in UCLA’s division of pediatric hematology-oncology, where I was a second-year resident. We were in the middle of rounds, and upon hearing the news, our team grew somber.

“Alex passed peacefully, surrounded by her family and friends,” the attending told us. “Her family wants to thank the medical team for their care and support.”

Alex had been transferred to our pediatric intensive-care unit (PICU) for acute respiratory failure; she needed sedation, a breathing tube and blood-pressure support.

She was only twenty years old, an undergraduate at an East Coast university.

When Dads Fail

Zoran Naumovski April 18, 2025 8 Comments

My youngest son Camron, was only ten years old—and he was feeling bereft, because he’d lost all connection to his friends. His iPad was on the fritz, less than a year after we’d purchased it.

Camron had yet to dive into the electronic age as his classmates had done. Mostly he played outside with his dogs and cats, fed and chased his goats and bounced on the trampoline with his brother. But during the one hour per day when we permitted him to play games online with his friends, he grinned from ear to ear and laughed nonstop.

Now his iPad had quit working.

Thanksgiving 2023

Laura Fry November 22, 2024 15 Comments

It has been years, decades really, since I have watched television. I have the box, watch movies, but haven’t had cable ever. My two children were in first and second grade when I divorced their dad, and the house we moved into had no reception.

“Oh, well,” I told them, “no TV.” They were too little to grumble, but years later my daughter thanked me, saying, “We did so many other things.”

Now I find myself newly single and in transition for the winter, living in a rented house with—you guessed it—a TV with a full complement of channels and full reception.

We Are Here

Deb O'Rourke November 8, 2024 5 Comments

We are here.
At the foot of your bed,
I warm your limp feet in my hands.

A daughter cleans your mouth, a thirsty anemone.
Your only action is its eager suckle
of the sponge. My sister’s
offering is careful, sparse—
your retiring body can take little but air.

September Third Year

Anjali Jaiman September 13, 2024 12 Comments

Today a patient died. Jake was forty years old. When he came into the emergency room, Jake was dying of sepsis. I gave him some pain medication, and he just slipped away. I did try to save him. As his blood pressure dropped, I ran fluids and antibiotics. I put his head down to keep blood flowing to his brain. I ordered labs and an X-ray and an EKG.

I had taken care of Jake several times during his previous hospitalizations. He was sweet, but tired. He was blind from diabetes, and his irises were gray-white. I think he shut his eyes as he died, but I can’t quite remember.

Not Knowing

Kay White Drew August 23, 2024 11 Comments

A few days after I’d rotated off the adolescent ward at the university hospital where I was a second-year pediatric resident, I stopped in at Billy’s room to see how he was doing. He was pale, with a few fresh bruises below the sleeves of his hospital gown, but his big brown eyes brightened when he saw me.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked.

“She had to go to work on another ward,” his mom said, rubbing his forearm gently. “I told you that, remember?”

Happiness Loves Company

Suyash Jha May 31, 2024 4 Comments

I remember the first time I saw the gates of the Missionaries of Charity home for the destitute and dying, on the outskirts of my hometown, Pune, in western India.

I must have been nine or ten. To my annoyance, my parents had woken me early that Sunday morning to go with them to visit the home and bring donations of clothes and other necessities.

“How much longer, Papa?” I kept asking as we drove.

The Sturgeon

Patricia Massel May 3, 2024 2 Comments

Kind eyes, and a fragile body like a reed
Barely just a presence on the room, as if almost fading
Already into the twilight

Under gentle, careful hands
His body unveils its story with its familiar tells.
The slender wrists, childlike, beneath pitted skin.
Deeply scooped recess above collarbones.
A subtle, solid wedge of liver,
Looming ominously below ribcage.

Fear of Flesh

Olivia Schreiber November 3, 2023 4 Comments

Sometimes I wish that skin and bones didn’t exist. Of course, that would be impossible—the skeleton is the scaffold for our bodies, while the skin is the insulation for vital organs such as the heart, kidneys and bowels. Without our skin and bones, we’d be mere piles of goo on the floor.

Bones are too complicated, for the simple reason that there are too many. As a first-year medical student studying anatomy, I agonized over learning the grooves and prominences where the muscles originate and insert into the bones. I always struggled to find these so-called bony landmarks on our simulated patients.

And flesh…the skin is even more horrifying than the bones beneath it.

Kids Always Know

Nancy L. Glass September 1, 2023 17 Comments

This is a story about failures. First, it’s about my inability as a pediatric hospice physician to do the one most important job in this tender space. Second, it’s about well-meaning, loving parents’ inability to do their part in that job.

Jacob was a smart, funny, elementary-age kid, great with Legos.

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