death

Memorializing Covid

COVID-19 does not seem amenable to grand memorials, at least right now. Perhaps because the millions of deaths from COVID-19 have been diffused so widely, often in isolation—and of course still ongoing—the memorials that are starting to crop up are very human in scale. More

Taking Stock of the Second Covid Surge

As the pandemic raged from the winter surge through to the spring slog, my Postmortem folder lit up with a dispiriting regularity. I opened it with dread as it revealed which of my patients had perished that week. More

A Brush

I had seen death up close, felt its hostile breath pucker my skin, winced at its corroding presence in my lap, recoiled from its imperious barreling into my private space …and it scared the pants off of me. More

Nursing Juliet

A dog is both Rorschach and receptacle, a two-way highway for love unbounded and unadulterated. In a world that relentlessly enforces limits, the love of a pet is a refuge for unconstrained emotion, especially for a child. More

Patients, and Doctors, Aren’t Dying at Home

Doctors, it turns out, aren’t much different than everyone else when it comes to where they die. More

Fear of Dying Alone

What if a patient dies and nobody is there to mourn? Is it like a tree falling soundlessly in the forest? More

The Little Things

Although technically these are the little things, in a sense they’re actually the big things. Indeed, for some patients, the little thing may be the only thing that matters. More

Doctors’ Suicide discussed on NPR

What happens it’s the doctor who commits suicide? Sadly, physicians–as a group–have a higher suicide rate than other professionals. Here’s the story of one doctor and the effects of his death on his student. More

Doc, How Much Time I Got?

There are few situations more horrible than having to tell another human being that he or she is going to die. And it doesn’t get any easier with experience… More

Doctors and the D Word….

I could understand why other people might prefer euphemisms for death, but why medical professionals? Weren’t we supposed to be much more comfortable with the workings of the human body? Didn’t we pride ourselves on our technical accuracy? Didn’t we say “umbilicus” instead of “belly button”? More

Doctor at the Funeral

Death is a given in medicine. That truism, though, doesn’t offer much comfort when it’s your patient who has died. I was in clinic the other day, showing the ropes to a fresh-faced medical student, when a nurse leaned toward me and whispered that L.W. had died over the holiday weekend.

It was like a sucker-punch in the gut, the raw rope of grief lashing out unexpectedly. More

Palliative Care: From the Get-Go

The scientific world finally produced the data to support what seems so obvious: Palliative care belongs in the beginning of cancer treatment, not just at the end. More

A Patient, a Death, but No One to Grieve

What if a patient dies and nobody is there to mourn? Is it like a tree falling silently in the forest? More

Memoir of Lost Love

Kay Redfield Jamison writes movingly of her love for her husband, and chronicles the illnesses that he faced in clear-eyed, heartfelt prose. Danielle Ofri reviews her book for The Lancet. More

Autopsy Room

Our first stop was the morgue. The cavernous walk-in refrigerator was icy and silent. Here were the unclaimed bodies, mostly elderly men from the streets. The ones that were never identified, never claimed, went to our anatomy lab. More