Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Tag: Palliative Care

  • Medicalization of death and dying: Room for growth in end-of-life care

    Rose ParisiAlbany, New York, United States In recent years, the way in which Americans cope with death and dying has evolved considerably and become institutionalized and over-medicalized. Whereas over time people have died in their homes, untethered to wires and machinery, modern medicine has turned people into patients and handed them over to medical professionals…

  • Allowing my death—a delusory end-of-life decision

    Wolfgang LedererInnsbruck, Austria Together with the gift of life, I have received its finiteness, its perishability. As death is inescapable, when might I allow my life to end? Certainly, my life expectancy has to be longer than average, and I demand good physical and mental health right down to the last minute. Furthermore, my life…

  • A moonie

    Simon WeinPetach Tikvah, Israel Wally Moon was a legend who stood at least 1.90 meters tall. The most striking things about him were his appearance and his gruffness. When I met him during my residency he was in his early sixties. He had a magnificent girth, fuelled by quantities of non-politically correct food—even then in…

  • Letting go of logic

    Nimisha BajajColumbus, Ohio, United States “He’s here for aspiration pneumonia. He doesn’t want a G-tube even though we tried to explain to him that if he continues to eat and drink by mouth, this will keep happening and he will eventually die from it. Can you come down and see him?” The palliative care fellow,…

  • 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…

  • A form of pain

    Ifediba NzubePort Harcourt, Nigeria For Yewande, pain is Èsù slapping her head like a bata drum. But no one sees that; they see only a tumor pushing out her left eye, up her palate, and through her nostrils. Most days she smells like meat gone green. The other patients can tolerate the smell but they…

  • The book that galvanized a health care transformation

    Sherrie DulworthNew York, United States One of the major health care sea changes of the past half-century did not originate from the usual sources of scientific research, technological development, or even clinical trial-and-error. Instead, a book written for a general audience galvanized a health care transformation. While the cultural revolution of the 1960’s had ushered…

  • Poppy power

    John Graham-PoleGainesville, Florida, United States The poppy’s juice . . .brings the sleep to dear Mama— Sara Coleridge, Pretty Lessons in Verse for Good Children In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree— Samuel Coleridge, Kubla Khan, penned on waking from an opium-induced dream Of all God’s floral bounty, only papaver somnifera drips its beads…

  • PEACH: Providing end of life care for the homeless

    Lea MendesLisbon, Portugal Homeless people make up a Fourth World population in industrialized as well as developing countries. Homelessness creates a higher risk for disease and premature death. An innovative Canadian program provides care for those who are homeless at the end of life, especially for those who might otherwise die alone. PEACH (Palliative Education…

  • Emily Dickinson and medical ethics: The “Belle of Amherst” as ethicist

    Bonnie SalomonIllinois, United States It is a conceit of many a reader to interpret poetry as it affects their daily life. It certainly is a fancy of this reader, pouring over Emily Dickinson’s poems as a literary respite. While teaching a medical ethics course at a local college this past autumn, I stumbled onto several…