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end-of-life

Covid-19: End-of-Life Choices

By Advocate, Caregiver, ePatient, Family man, Podcasts

At least 67,000 individuals have died of Covid19 in the US and 244K worldwide so far. Each death is a family’s grief. How do we advocate for ourselves, each other? Palliative care = feeling less miserable. Have you discussed end-of-life and palliative care with your family? Do it now.

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Caring for Parents. It’s Their Life. Open the Door.

By Caregiver, ePatient, Family man, Podcasts

Allie, Becky, and Jenni have gone through the gut-wrenching experience of trying to manage the physical and cognitive deterioration of their parents. How do you partner from a distance with reluctant parents? Do you intervene? How do you intervene? How much do you intervene? What’s best for them?  How do we maintain our boundaries as we help parents we love so much and make us so crazy?

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Salt in My Soul. An Unfinished Life

By Advocate, Caregiver, ePatient, Podcasts

Mallory Smith lived and died with Cystic Fibrosis. Mallory wrote, “Salt in My Soul: An Unfinished Life.” In this fifteen episode of Young Adults with Complex Conditions, I speak with mother, Diane. Mallory was Captain of her own ship, lived HAPPY, and shares many lessons with us. Heart-warming affirmation! Tragic, tragic, tragic!

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Best Spiritual Health, Dying

By Caregiver, ePatient, Family man

Sixteen years ago on November 18, 2002, our son, our brother, our friend, Michael Funk, died of metastatic melanoma at age 26. Mike said that he wasn’t born with a tattoo on his butt telling him how long he had to live.  What a gift.  Mike was a gift. His perspective about dying was a gift. One day we were sitting at the kitchen table talking about dying and superpowers. Mike thought that he and I had the same superpower: we both accept what is. Yup, he died young. That’s life. You open your heart and tragedy just walks right in. What’s the alternative? Closed heart? Not for me.

Welcome, my dear Health Hats blog readers, let me introduce you to the birth of Health Hats, the Podcast. We are here to empower people as they travel together toward best health. Best health includes physical, mental, and spiritual health. Today’s blog post and podcast are about Mike who found his best spiritual health over the last year of his life, as he died. Read More

Best Health at End of Life

By Caregiver, ePatient, Family man, Podcasts

Episode Summary

Best Health includes physical, mental, and spiritual health. Michael Funk, my son, died at age 26 on November 18, 2002, of metastatic melanoma. Mike found his best spiritual health in the last year of his life as he died. As Mike said, I wasn’t born with a tattoo telling me how long I had to live. This first episode of Health Hats, the Podcast, celebrates Mike’s journey through a montage of an interview with Mike several months before he died, a conversation with Bob Doherty who conducted that interview, and stories about my experiences with Mike. Listen as we try to make sense of this reality.

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WHAT RESEMBLES THE GRAVE BUT ISN’T

By Advocate, Clinician, ePatient, Family man

Photo by Lily Lvnatikk on Unsplash

Apologies for the duplicate post. I changed hosts and lost this post in the migration.

My friend and story-teller, Susan Spivack, sent me this poem. Really spoke to me. I may be pathologically optimistic and live in a comforting, safe, privileged bubble, but I allow myself moments of despair, feeling sorry for myself, and overwhelmed with the pain I feel around me. Doesn’t this say it beautifully?!

WHAT RESEMBLES THE GRAVE BUT ISN’T

Always falling into a hole, then saying “ok, this is not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of the hole which is not the grave, falling into a hole again, saying “ok, this is also not your grave, get out of this hole,” getting out of that hole, falling into another one; sometimes falling into a hole within a hole, or many holes within holes, getting out of them one after the other, then falling again, saying “this is not your grave, get out of the hole”; sometimes being pushed, saying “you can not push me into this hole, it is not my grave,” and getting out defiantly, then falling into a hole again without any pushing; sometimes falling into a set of holes whose structures are predictable, ideological, and long dug, often falling into this set of structural and impersonal holes; sometimes falling into holes with other people, with other people, saying “this is not our mass grave, get out of this hole,” all together getting out of the hole together, hands and legs and arms and human ladders of each other to get out of the hole that is not the mass grave but that will only be gotten out of together; sometimes the willful-falling into a hole which is not the grave because it is easier than not falling into a hole really, but then once in it, realizing it is not the grave, getting out of the hole eventually; sometimes falling into a hole and languishing there for days, weeks, months, years, because while not the grave very difficult, still, to climb out of and you know after this hole there’s just another and another; sometimes surveying the landscape of holes and wishing for a high quality final hole; sometimes thinking of who has fallen into holes which are not graves but might be better if they were; sometimes too ardently contemplating the final hole while trying to avoid the provisional ones; sometimes dutifully falling and getting out, with perfect fortitude, saying “look at the skill and spirit with which I rise from that which resembles the grave but isn’t!”

~Anne Boyer, “This project was co-curated by the journalism nonprofit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project and its Puffin Story Innovation Fund.”  ~https://billmoyers.com/story/poetry-month-what-resembles-the-grave-but-isnt/

Eulogy

My Aunt Kato (Kikke) Pomer (van Leeuwen) passed away this week at age 101.  Kikke was a Freudian psychiatrist who began medical school in the Netherlands just before the Nazis invaded. She and her family escaped to the United States, She couldn’t gain admittance to medical school here because she was a woman, a Jew, and a refugee.  A family friend suggested that she meet Albert Einstein and ask him for a reference. She did and he did.  She graduated from Johns Hopkins Medical School and practiced in LA into her 90’s. Aunt Kikke inspired and encouraged me in nursing, advocacy, and in life. I’ll miss you.

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