Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: End of Life

  • Dream on

    Paul RousseauCharleston, South Carolina, United States ChartThis is a 32-year-old female with widely metastatic breast cancer admitted to the hospital for control of shortness of breath and pain. ____ Melissa sits slumped, mouth open, snoring. I pull a chair bedside and gently touch her shoulder. Her head jerks, startled. She wipes drool from her chin…

  • Piano lessons

    James StemmleWest Virginia, United States The piano teacher was angry, irritable, incontinent, and in pain. Dying of cancer, she eventually went home with hospice care. The hospice lady asked, “What would a good day look like?” They rigged things in her home to live at least one good day: a bed on the first floor…

  • As my mother lay dying

    Peter MeyersWashington, D.C., United States My mother was sitting up in bed when I walked into her hospital room. When I asked her how she was doing, she grinned and responded, “Super!” Her doctor, standing nearby, added that she was the happiest and most easygoing patient on the ward. That was not the mother I…

  • Life lessons from death

    Pedro T. LimaRecife, Brazil “How would you like to die?” the professor asked without breaking eye contact. I averted my gaze to ponder the question, but no answers came to mind. “I’ve never thought about it. I guess that I would hope to be with people I love,” I stuttered, still collecting my thoughts. “You…

  • The Lazarus phenomenon: When the dead return to life

    Tom SeweNairobi, Kenya It is a few minutes after 2 AM. A middle-aged woman lays motionless on a table in a hospital emergency department with tubes protruding from multiple orifices. The relentless cardiac monitor screams its flat-line signal as the code-blue team pants, scrubs clinging to their sweaty chests after a phenomenal forty-five-minute cardiopulmonary resuscitation…

  • The unsung heroes

    Julia AngkeowBel Air, Maryland, United States The unsung heroes of hospice are the family members and friends who are there to console their loved ones when all others have gone to bed. They are the ones who never rest, constantly brooding over how to best mitigate their loved ones’ pain, and ensure that their final…

  • Unfettered grief

    Lealani AcostaNashville, Tennessee, United States My first glimpse of unfettered grief was through shaggy six-year-old bangs, watching my mother weep, hunched over the toilet and framed by moonlight that cast the pale blue tiles of their master bathroom into darkness. I glimpsed that grief again as a second-year neurology resident, with my long, black hair…

  • A wrong time to die

    Anthony PapagiannisThessaloniki, Greece Death is the one absolute and unexceptional certainty in life. In the Bible we read that there is a time for everything, including a time to die [Ecclesiastes 3:2]. Is there ever a “right” time to die? Faced with such a question, we often consider that anyone who has achieved their aims…

  • The proximity of death

    Paul C. RosenblattSt. Paul, Minnesota, United States In September 1951, I was a very sick twelve-year-old, covered with bruises and red dots where blood vessels were leaking. My nose had been bleeding for days and nothing we did stopped it. My blood was not clotting. The morning my mother took me to the University Hospital…

  • Goals of care

    Leah Grant Portland, Oregon It was the beginning of my intern year and I felt like an impostor. Facing new responsibilities in both the hospital and clinic, I was aware of my lack of experience when patients asked for my medical opinion. But as I began to see the same patients again and again in the…