Writing
A selection of personal essays and narrative pieces
I know the exact day that broke me.
...I never expected that 7 months into my marriage, I’d be asking, each time I was exposed to a deadly disease at work, whether I should come home.
Yes, the patient was a beloved dog, and not a human. And yet… is it so different when suddenly a person we love has a sudden change in their health, and we are faced with making split second decisions about whether to pursue every possible treatment?
Several years ago, a patient asked me if I wanted to know how she first learned she was dying.
“My doctors used to check my heart and lungs every visit. They stopped checking. That's how I knew.”
You’re only a few years older than me, and today I’m finding it hard to be your doctor.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” my patient said softly. I paused and moved closer to the bedside, hoping I’d heard wrong. “I don’t want to do this anymore,” he said again.
It’s normal to feel unprepared to enter the room of someone who is dying, to worry about what you will say. But it’s also our job to be present and help our patients and their families navigate a process that is both natural and impossible to prepare for. Here are a few tips on how...