end of life Archives - Page 2 of 11

Gift of Gratitude

Naveen Menon November 18, 2022 13 Comments

We all remember our patients who die, though the first patient death really stands out from the rest. This was certainly true for me.

I was just starting the second year of my internal-medicine residency. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen someone die, but it was the first time I’d seen someone who’d been alive and well, and talking to me that morning, be dead by the afternoon–a shocking dichotomy that haunts me to this day.

Almost Normal

Dianne Apter July 15, 2022 11 Comments

His steps are wobbly. Our children hold their father’s hands to steady him as they move through the sand toward the ocean. I remain far back on the shore, shading my eyes to make out the three of them as they stand in the shallow water.

I am thinking that he looks like a ten-year-old child from this distance. My sight turns blurry, a combination of sun, sand and sorrow.

Going in Peace

Tim Sanborn May 13, 2022 9 Comments

All too often in my forty years of practicing medicine, I’ve seen patients die hard, lonely deaths—lying on a stretcher under the emergency department’s glaring lights, or all alone in an ICU bed.

In extreme situations, the patient is covered in medical equipment: a breathing tube in the mouth, defibrillator pads on the chest, monitor leads on the torso, IV lines dangling from the neck and arms. When family members finally enter the room, it’s heart-wrenching to see them weep over their loved one, to whom they never got to say goodbye.

But it doesn’t always happen this way.

Why Isn’t He Listening?

Kirstin Hope Peters February 15, 2022 5 Comments

I was in my third year of medical school, partway through my psychiatry rotation.

“You’re ready for your first mental-capacity consult,” my attending said. I felt excited at being deemed ready to administer this evaluation, which is used to determine whether a patient has the ability to make decisions about their own care.

“The medicine team is confused about this one,” my attending continued. “He’s clinically improving from his COVID infection, but he wants to withdraw from care and has refused physical therapy.

Dying Is Ugly

Henry Schneiderman February 4, 2022 15 Comments

Bang my shins, my temple on the gritty wall
Of Charlie’s deathbed
Where we do not wrest the truth
But beg him Let us change the (piss-stenched) sheets.
He will not go for tests, insists, denial overarching

Deep Diver

Allyson Sutkowi-Hemstreet February 1, 2022 7 Comments

I knock on the partly open door and peek around the curtain. A grainy yellow light above the hospital bed falls on a frail, trembling woman as she struggles to comb her wet grey hair.

“Margaret?” I say quietly.

She does not hear me over the hiss of the supplemental oxygen. I watch her for a moment longer.

Where My Story Ends and Yours Begins

Caitlyn N. Myrdal January 28, 2022 11 Comments

It was a Thursday morning, my first day on the medical oncology service. I hurriedly gathered my white coat and badge, the block letters “3rd Year Medical Student” unmistakable in fresh ink. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to look up at the cancer center.

This is going to be difficult, I thought.

Regret

Eric Last December 10, 2021 10 Comments

A full head of white hair.

Each in its place.

Not just neatly.

Meticulously.

Perfectly.

A full head of white hair. That’s what I see in my minds’ eye, when I close my actual eyes and conjure up my grandfather.

A Beginner’s Touch

Karen Curran November 26, 2021 3 Comments

My husband George got to know Ruthie while he was sitting with his mom during her final days in an assisted-living facility. Ruthie, a hospice worker, was a middle-aged woman who had reentered the workforce after raising her kids. As a nursing-assistant trainee, she was learning on the job, with George’s mom, unconscious and steadily declining, as one of her first patients.

Soon after meeting Ruthie, George was struck by her lack of self-confidence.

I Wish I’d Known

Sara Lynne Wright September 24, 2021 9 Comments

From the computer screen a few inches away, Oliver’s honey-brown eyes gazed into mine in the unadulterated way that only children’s eyes can, matching the directness of his question:

“Is he going to die?”

The Other Side of the Mask

Ria Mulherkar August 31, 2021 11 Comments

I don’t know what it’s like on the other side of the mask.

Not the cloth mask, which I now wear every day, as habitually as my socks. I mean the plastic bipap mask, which provides the highest level of ventilation COVID patients can receive, short of intubation.

That mask.

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: end of life

Gift of Gratitude

Almost Normal

Going in Peace

Why Isn’t He Listening?

Dying Is Ugly

Deep Diver

Where My Story Ends and Yours Begins

Regret

A Beginner’s Touch

I Wish I’d Known

The Other Side of the Mask

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: end of life

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