Code
“They need you in room 13” she said when I answered the phone and I ran back to the ICU. The patient was coding and for each minute that felt like an hour, we tried, and failed, to save her. She wasn’t breathing, her heart wasn’t working, and despite the 30 people gathered in the room, … Continue reading
On Smoking and Death
“I don’t want to quit smoking,” my patient says with her face firmly set. I’m taken aback. “I don’t think that’s true,” I say,” you just told me you quit, then you started again because your brother and grandson died in the past few months and you’re struggling with the loss. I don’t think it’s … Continue reading
Denial and the Imponderable Differences
David Foster Wallace “Infinite Jest” Page 604 …people of a certain age and level of like life-experience believe they’re immortal: …they deep-down believe they’re exempt from the laws of physics … And they’re constitutionally unable to learn from anybody else’s experience: if some jaywalking B.U. student does get splattered on Comm. or some House resident … Continue reading
Brain Transplant
When I was in Boston, I had a patient with a brain tumor and two adult sons. She had a malignant, progressive brain tumor and had been unresponsive for months. Her prognosis was poor. One son, I’ll call him Peter, thought she would have wanted to be DNR/DNI: if her heart stops, if her breathing … Continue reading
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