Choosing a Quality Hospice

You matter because of who you are. You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can not only to die peacefully, but also to live until you die. Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement Don't count on treating your chronic disease indefinitely, or that it … Continue reading Choosing a Quality Hospice →

Sound and Policing In Our Age of Incessancy

I lower the car radio volume, finally turn it off. I'm in the middle of a nurse's work day. From a set of unrelated morning notes, I wonder how to justify all the necessary head space nursing requires with the time I need to create a satisfying sentence. It costs the world ten gallons of … Continue reading Sound and Policing In Our Age of Incessancy →

What Are You Going Through?: On Paying Attention

The love of our neighbor and all its form simply means being able to say to him: "What are you going through?" It is a recognition that the sufferer exists, not only as a unit in a collection, or a specimen from the social category labeled "unfortunate," but as a man, exactly like us, who … Continue reading What Are You Going Through?: On Paying Attention →

Difficult Conversations: Anatomy of “The Talk”

Revised. Originally from September 11, 2020 Last Friday at Summer’s end I met a fellow clinician at a patient’s home. He was what we call in hospice the Main Caregiver. I recognized how he wore his fatigue like a second skin. Excellent of skills and knowledge, this ICU RN stepped down to speak apart from … Continue reading Difficult Conversations: Anatomy of “The Talk” →

Guilt, Grief, and Honoring the Dead

We might improve our understanding about grief's supposedly destructive features. Guilt keeps memory alive. We sure as hell don't forget feeling personally responsible for someone's premature death, rather than having pulled them back from destruction. There are so many ways to die and so many times for dying, but once dead there's no more chances … Continue reading Guilt, Grief, and Honoring the Dead →

Hospice Focus Group Q & A

I heard "Free breakfast" and agreed. Then drove 20 miles in morning rush hour to discuss something with unknown others at the branch office. Maybe ideas to jolly up the work environment, help us worker bees, or get our company's message better integrated into the healthcare market? Perhaps a mixed bag of motives. Something to … Continue reading Hospice Focus Group Q & A →

Mother Gets the Dreadful Phlegms

I can't breathe Manuel Ellis, Edward Bronstein, Eric Gardner, George Floyd... Anything amiss with a human airway is potentially deadly, we seem born knowing. You'd think, unlike these dead men from policing tragedies who prove the contrary, that opening their closed airways was important enough that they would suddenly pay attention and instantly cooperate while … Continue reading Mother Gets the Dreadful Phlegms →

Myth of the Peaceful Death

Did you hear the palliative medicine fable that every single symptom for every minute of the day can be "taken care of"/Managed? Oh, sure you have. We know the world does not work like that, not the imperfect world we know, but want to believe in the myth. Connotations of a quote Good Death = … Continue reading Myth of the Peaceful Death →

Nurses Not Calling Doctors

In my time there went a woman begging about this Cittie, who had a Coffin carried with her, and oftentimes she fell into those Hystericall fits, and would lye so long in them, nothing differing from a dead carkasse, till the wonted time of her reviving. Hence it may * be came the Proverbe, Thou … Continue reading Nurses Not Calling Doctors →

Learning to Die

All my life I have been surrounded by things I'd rather not know too much about, so I have come to feel that truth made naked without purpose is really a wanton. The Kraken Wakes, John Wyndham Since we're all going to die some day, we might consider imagining as sooner than too late imagine … Continue reading Learning to Die →