funerals

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