What would you do with an 89-year-old woman who walks with a walker, and you find in “a fib” two years after her last ECG? I might not thin her blood. And just a…
Read More
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…
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…
I had visited Mr. Williams several times over the last few months. In his early 60’s he had been diagnosed with lung cancer after years of tobacco use combined with…
“It’s not personal. It’s just business.” Is healthcare a business? Should it be a business? These are serious existential questions that need to be answered as palliative care works to…
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…
Victor Frankel’s book Man’s Search for Meaning outlines his experiences in the holocaust, the loss of his family and all that was precious to him, and his continued search and…
Over the weekend one of our hospice patients had been brought to the Emergency Department when his temperature was 101. His work-up had revealed WBC’s in his urine and he…
The University of Colorado’s Palliative Care Coursera Specialization launched about a month ago and people all over the world are starting to find their way to the course. I wanted…