Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: death

  • Ushers of life

    Genevieve KupskyWashington, D.C., USA “You are on holy ground. Time is sacred, and the veil is thin.” The chaplain left the newly-oriented volunteers with these words as we completed our training. My mind was spinning with the implications of this experience. Each patient we interacted with would have a prognosis of six months to live…

  • The other kingdom

    Jamie SamsonDublin, Ireland “Everyone who is born,” Susan Sontag wrote in Illness as Metaphor, “holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick.”1 While the passport denoting health and vigor might get us through customs most of the time, we eventually reach that unwelcome day when it is…

  • Books: Catalysts for health care change

    Sherrie DulworthNew York, New York, United States Some books are enlightening, others are influential, but precious few are transformative. Those rare books are catalysts for change that help propel society into a collective “ah ha” awakening. Think of Silent Spring,1 The Jungle,2 or The Feminine Mystique3 and their respective effect on environmental consciousness, food safety, and women’s…

  • Avulsions

    Torree McGowanCulver, Oregon, United States There are moments in life that serve as a dividing line. These instants sharply incise our worlds into before and after, the then and the now. Moments shimmer like a crystalline barrier, allowing you to see so clearly through to what was, but that past is just out of reach.…

  • Edvard Munch: The child who never grew up

    Michael YafiHouston, Texas The paintings of Edvard Munch are often used as an example of the association between creativity and mental illness. Can we, however, analyze them from the perspective of the feelings of a child? Traumatized by the death of his mother when he was only five years old1 as portrayed in The Dead…

  • 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…

  • The public death of Prince Albert

    Death in modern times tends to be a private affair, whether in hospital, hospice, or in the home. But in the past no such privacy was accorded to royalty, as shown in this painting of the last moments of Albert, the beloved Prince Consort of Queen Victoria. The Prince died in 1861 after a brief…

  • Death and new-doctor eyes

    Katrina GenuisVancouver, Canada With slim cuts to her wrists, she came into the emergency room and said she wanted to die. “This is clearly a cry for attention,” others said. “Send the new doctor to stitch her up.” I sat by her bed with a 30-gauge lidocaine-filled needle and 4.0 nylon sutures, and began unravelling…

  • Dance with death

    Marianne RogoffKentfield, California, USA Stephanie lived alone in a rented cottage at the back of a garden path. When she was dying at age fifty of ovarian cancer, her only vow was not to die alone, so she assembled an army of friends to sign up for two-hour shifts, 24/7, to keep her company. She…

  • Death and dignity – a lesson learned from my father

    Dhastagir SheriffChennai, Tennessee, India I was working as a professor of biochemistry and as the vice-principal of faculty at the Ambedkar Medical College in Bangalore. It was a welcome change after working in Libya for ten years and I was bubbling with energy and ambition to serve the cause of education. I felt that a…