I gave the eulogy at my first cousin’s funeral this past weekend and I have never been so grateful for the year I spent honing my writer skills. There were tears and more than a few pauses to gather myself, but I have never felt more comfortable calling myself a writer.
This morning as I purused the sources I look to when writing my Wednesday posts, I ran across this amazing essay in the Journal of the American Medical Association’s Neurology section on what it’s like to be a Palliative Care clinician and I shared a link to it below.
Dr. Robert Holloway, from the Palliative Care Service at the University of Rochester in New York describes some of the best descriptions of what it’s like to care for patients on “comfort care.”
I had advocated strongly for my first cousin who was in multiple organ failure in the hospital to be transitioned to comfort care which meant stopping kidney dialysis and tratments meant to temporarily reverse late-stage heart failure. My non-medical family members did not really understand the term comfort-care and I, so indoctrinated in medical lingo, had to explain it to the best of my ability during a crisis.
Dr. Holloway’s essay uses case studies focused on the ups and downs of faith and doubt as the backdrop for how he teaches young physicians about comfort care.
I couldn’t say it better than he did. Find the essay at the link below.
If you’re unable to access the JAMA Network. Here’s my favorite quote:
“Herein is where much of the suffering experienced by patients and families resides—not from the scientific uncertainties within our professional world, but in the existential uncertainties borne of the lived experience of illness and irreversible loss.”
Robert G. Holloway, MD, MPH University of Rochester School of Medicine
And here’s a link to a great YouTube overview of Comfort Care.
Heartfelt condolences for your loss, Anna.