Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: End of Life

  • An act of cowardice

    Michael ShenIndianapolis, Indiana, United States In autumn, the leaves turn yellow and die. The cirrhotics in the unit do the same. Their path already charted, their lives like leaves in the wind, we carried them as long as we could. We poked and drained and filled, knowing that nothing would change the inevitable. Like leaves,…

  • La Pieta

    Rachel FleishmanPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania, United States A mother holds her dead child. His body flops open without resistance, freshly dead. His head is cocked back, shoulder lifted, arms release the last vestige of grip. Her face sullen, her hand beside him open and offering, she holds but does not touch her son. A single moment of…

  • A good man

    Tuhina RamanPhiladelphia, PA, USA My heart sank as soon as I saw it—tumor nodules in the trachea and a mass eroding through the stent in his airway. I had been hoping against hope. It is always difficult losing a favorite patient to a bad disease. I had biopsied and stented his airway five weeks earlier.…

  • They would rather go alone

    Kera MorrisDenver, Colorado, USA Dad had been in and out of hospice for years. It had not occurred to me that you could go into hospice and come out on your own two feet, but it was apparently the case. When I got the last call about Dad having an episode and needing to go…

  • Where am I when my digital footprint persists indefinitely?

    Naomi Rachel OldhamWest London, United Kingdom Our digital selves remain present in the world even after we have died. Social media and email accounts, websites to which we have subscribed, photos, videos, and voice messages persist after death. What might this mean when considering an individual’s presence or absence in the world? Throughout different periods…

  • Until I get my strength back

    Anne L. RooneyOak Park, Illinois, USA The emaciated woman lay scrunched in a fetal position with her back to me. I stood in the doorway to her cramped bedroom. “Hello, Loretta. Can I come in?” Loretta rolled over, squinting with suspicion. “You a nurse?” I nodded. “I’m a nurse who visits people who are really…

  • A CV for posterity

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece The British Medical Journal (BMJ) is one of the oldest and most eminent general medical journals. Among its many and varied features is a regular obituaries page. Departed members of all branches of the medical profession, academic teachers, researchers and Nobel Prize winners, hospital and army doctors, and general practitioners, are remembered…

  • The morning ritual

    Peter H. BerczellerDordogne, France Years ago, I heard the adage: “When you get up in the morning, and you don’t see your name in the Times obituaries, you’re good for another day.” I was young then, with no understanding of the seriousness beneath this seemingly witty remark. As a medicine resident, I was no stranger to…

  • Why not let her go gently into that good night?

    Victoria LimIowa City, Iowa, United States One early morning I was paged to see an eighty-five-year-old patient in the dialysis unit with low blood pressure. I learned that she had diabetes, hypertension, and diffuse atherosclerosis. In the past decade she had undergone four major surgeries for blocked arteries and had suffered two strokes. For the…

  • Rosencrantz, Guildenstern, and their doctor are dead

    Joshua NiforatosGregory RuteckiCleveland, Ohio, United States ROSENCRANTZ: “Whatever became of the moment when one first knew about death? There must have been one, a moment, in childhood when it first occurred to you that you don’t go on forever. It must have been shattering – stamped into one’s memory. And yet, I can’t remember it.…