What if I told you that a key health care metric grew in a positive direction, from 24% to 31% in 15 years? What if I then told you that a big part of the change was driven by people inspired by personal experiences, not clinical training? Most Americans tell survey researchers they don’t want […]
end of life
Engage with Grace
Can you and your loved ones answer these questions? 1. On a scale of 1 to 5, where do you fall on this continuum: 1 = Let me die without medical intervention; 5 = Don’t give up on me no matter what, try any proven and unproven intervention possible. 2. If there were a choice, […]
Designing Peer-to-peer Health
“How can peer to peer connection make a healthier society? Can Amazon reviews give us fresh insight into our health? Why do on-line patient communities represent an incredible untapped resource in healthcare? How can a co-designed death give us a fuller life?” Bon Ku and I explore these questions and more in Episode 59 of […]
Lessons learned about hospice care
A loved one recently went over the cancer waterfall and I dove in after him, keeping his head above water long enough to say goodbye to everyone. It was an intense four weeks of caregiving – two in the hospital and two at home, in hospice. I am sharing one segment of our story to […]
Elegy for A. and M.
I grew up rich in cousins. I spent holidays with my first cousins and lived, starting at age 11, in the same town with second cousins (the children of my mother’s first cousin) AND a first cousin twice removed (my grandmother’s first cousin – each generation that separates us is the “removed” part). Don’t worry, […]
A good death
You might think, looking at the open tabs on my browser, that I’ve got death on my mind. And you would be right. My father passed away in December from melanoma. The end was about as peaceful as we could have hoped for, but it was still hard to watch. I spent most of what […]
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