On Oliver Sacks’s “The Case of Anna H.”
In 1999, Oliver Sacks, the eclectic neurologist who was dubbed the “poet laureate of medicine,” received a letter from a pianist, Anna H. “My (very unusual) problem, in one sentence, and in [...]
The Emotional Evolution of Coronavirus for Doctors and Patients
Beth saw her first dead body of the day just as she was leaving the emergency department. Earlier, she’d admitted a patient with the coronavirus; now she was on her way to an upstairs doctor’s [...]
Treating Regret
Despite the pervasiveness of regret, doctors often overlook it. We often don’t explore the role regret might be playing in the distress many patients and families experience, or acknowledge it [...]
Caregiving for a sick loved one can be stressful, harrowing, depressing — and rewarding
It was the most important thing I would do that week. One morning, I walked around the hospital introducing myself to patients. I stopped by the room of a woman in her late 80s with dementia. Her [...]
When the future is running out, narrating the past helps to prepare
How should you live when you know you’re going to die? It is perhaps the ultimate, eternal question — one we all have to grapple with, but mercifully, don’t have to, until the end is crystallized [...]
The Hospital’s Gift of Downtime
Christmas week is a strange time in the hospital. There’s an added melancholy for patients who spend the holidays hospitalized — a sense that their illness, whatever it might be, is so bad they [...]