… this awareness leads to an otherwise impossible capacity for relationship … with our patients. “Piccinini explained in these words how involvement with his patients had come in ‘with a crash’ from the recognition of a common need and a shared question:’Sickness, suffering, pain, and death are the normal but sharpest expressions of human limitation, […]
David Weissman … Next Gen Palliative Care Diane Meier … first chapter of her Palliative Care text … interview with Diane Rehm Atul Gawande … New Yorker article NEJM study palliative care in lung cancer
palliative care resources … Read More »
“… a serious change is afoot and not just in the meaning of profound loss. Technology’s attendant rational technical practices of classifying, diagnosing, and intervening do not just change the world; they carry the potential to make up new people. So does the cultural sensibility of new generations to use psychoactive substances to manage the
grief … an opportunity for growth? … or a disease? Read More »
See, we don’t love like flowers, in a single year: when we love, an ancient sap rises in our arms. O, girls, this: that we loved inside us, not one to come, but the immeasurable seething: not a single child, but the fathers: resting on our depths like the rubble of mountains: the dry river-beds
feelings welling up from lost lives … Read More »
… it is of an Other … not a consolation that we invent. “The true challenge for anyone is the presence of reality, the wonder it evokes in us, the attraction with which it draws us. It is precisely because we are often disloyal, as I said this morning, that we cannot acknowledge this, and
the design is not ours … Read More »
“ … what one suffers is beyond one’s control – suffering is what one undergoes, what happens, what one endures. One cannot control true suffering. Suffering is what remains when one’s control runs out. And the very fact that it is beyond one’s control means that it helps to define one’s limits. To be a
suffering is what remains when control runs out … Read More »
… from everyone’s favorite Jesuit … 1. Allow yourself to be human 2. You don’t have to be someone else to be holy 3. You’re not married to everyone 4. Don’t let anyone prevent you from becoming the person you want to be. 5. You’re not Jesus Read Fr. Martin’s ‘The Five Best Pieces of
balance … and human-ness … Read More »
… based on the strength of a present reality. “Engendering hope is important, because it helps the patient to confront the uncertain future.” Kylma et. al. summarize hope engendering interventions … affirmation of patient’s worth, working with the patient, considering the patient in a holistic sense, nurse’s reflection in action. Affirmation of the patient’s worth
hope … certainty in the future … Read More »
… its desire to be forever. Margaret McCarthy provides a refreshing perspective to the ongoing HHS infringement on conscience freedoms … … it is not merely a question about religious institutions themselves being complicit in these things, but in anyone being complicit in them (especially insofar as they be required to be so). As far as the Catholic idea of
at the very heart of human love … Read More »
… into grace. God, “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4), like the father in the Gospel parable (cf. Lk 15:11-32), does not close his heart to any of his children, but waits for them, looks for them, reaches them where their rejection of communion imprisons them in isolation and division, and calls them to gather around
suffering transformed … Read More »
