Tag: End of Life
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The good shepherd
Pallavi Tatapudy South Kortright, New York, USA “Mr. Yankees stayed silent, but his eyes all the while were yelling, ‘O, my Good Shepherd, please don’t do this to me. How could I have gotten three strikes so soon? Give me the strength to continue playing in the game of life. I beg you to…
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A house call
Martin Duke Mystic, Connecticut, United States A doctor visiting a sick woman, and taking her pulse. Many years ago, in the mid 1980s, when I was still in clinical practice, I made a house call accompanied by a second year medical student who was coming to my office one day a week as part…
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How we love
Linda Clarke Guelph, Ontario, Canada Photo by James Sullivan The communities of health care and medicine are richly storied. For almost three decades, I have invited people in those communities to tell me their stories and they have been generous in their telling. A story told can be image-laden and many of those images…
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The talk
Akshay Khatri Valhalla, New York, United States Photo from Pixabay I walked into the emergency department with a sense of trepidation. The patient I was evaluating was Mrs. G, a woman whom I had cared for in the hospital a few months earlier. Now she was back from the nursing home with more shortness…
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When there’s no plug to pull
Darcy Sternberg New York, New York, United States On the Waves of Love. Edvard Munch, printed by Otto Felsing. 1896. The Art Institute of Chicago. At night I lie awake on the living room sofa staring at the moon, envying its constancy. Change had eaten up our lives. My husband, Marty, and I met…
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An act of cowardice
Michael Shen Indianapolis, Indiana, United States Charon carries souls across the river Styx. Alexander Dmitrievich Litovchenko. 1861. Russian Museum, St. Petersburg. 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…