Occasionally I get a touch cranky. I want to clearly say that palliative medicine and those who offer it to its fullest deserve our gratitude. And I don’t want to alienate any palliative provider I might ask for assistance in the future. But I remain highly skeptical and deeply worried because every exposure I have […]
Bite the dust, the big one. Buy the farm. Cash in your chips. Check out. Croak. Cross over. Depart. Expire. Give up the ghost. Good to go. Gone to your reward. Kick the bucket. Meet your maker. Off the mortal coil. Pass on or away. Pushing up daisies. What do these phrases, these substitutes for […]
As I work on the materials for the interactive segment of future Windrum’s Dying Terms Matrix presentations, a poem emerged reflecting the many ways we now have to die: Always A petal falls, always, and all ways: A whisper; tangle; sacrament; enmeshment; float; dangle; threadbare; indefinite; a dalliance; gentle into a good night; after discarding […]
It’s back: that scary phrase, that bald lie: “death panel.” As in, “the United States government will enact or enable panels of bureaucrats who will withhold medical treatment from your grandma or grandpa and let them instead die.” This was a (failed) provision of 2010’s healthcare reform act; now the accusers say that death panels […]
