My church recently celebrated the nonagenarians within the congregation—lovingly deemed the VIPs, Very Inspiring Persons—and I was amazed to learn that we have twenty members ninety years old and above!…
Read More
For more than twenty years I had in late winter or early spring read and re-read a collection of Walt Whitman poems. A few years ago, we moved to Colorado,…
Food….there is so much food in our society but many don’t have enough. Hangrey , the smash up of hungry and angry. The idea being that we often get grumpy…
Palliative care professionals works tirelessly to meet the comprehensive needs of those patients and loved ones who are attempting to navigate serious illness. We are laser focused in targeting gaps…
Facilitating spiritual and cultural rituals as desired by patients and families is an important component of holistic palliative care. The National Consensus Project for Quality Palliative Care makes this clear…
Reflective writing is an important part of my spiritual practice and my wellbeing as a healthcare professional. I’m grateful for recent collaborations with The Human Touch, a literary journal for…
I first started making “house calls” to my home hospice patients in 1989. It was a privilege to be able to come into the house to see the patient in…
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. This stanza from Mary Oliver’s poem “Sometimes” has made its way into every essay I have written about…
Understanding what you mean by “provide comfort care” can be very challenging. We use the term as shorthand within medicine, but it is confusing to the “real” world of our…