Considering Your Options When Lethal Injection Is Not Available
Lethal injection is not the only way to assert some control over how you die when you are old and suffering from a terminal illness. You might not know that if you read the recent piece by Catherine Porter in the New York Times: At His Own Wake, Celebrating Life and the Gift of Death. […]
Year Five: Words Have Power
Today is day eight of Year Five of this gap year experiment. If there’s a theme, it’s one of gradual acceptance of aging along with an increasing appreciation of the power of words. If there are surprises, perhaps it’s that Sam and I are still happily married after so much time in each other’s company – […]
Why Aging Mindfully Fits Right In With Admitting to Depression
I was tucking my five-year-old granddaughter into bed the other night when, to prolong the moment, she plied me with a blizzard of existential questions: “Wait… granny, who are you married to?” “Who is mommy married to?” “Who will I marry?” And then a quick segue… “Are you old?” “When will you die?” “Will you […]
Up and Down in Liguria, Fueled by Ibuprofen
I’ve sent the final draft of my manuscript to the publisher and it has been accepted for publication. With that behind me, Debbie and I “snuck away” recently for a trip to Italy – a walking tour of the coast of Liguria and the hills of Tuscany. It proved to be a delightful and illuminating […]
A First-Time Author Embraces the Impostor Phenomenon
It turns out that I am suffering from my first episode of the Impostor Syndrome. Mighty uncomfortable it is, too. I suppose that I felt “impostorish” to some degree on my first day of my medical internship, but I don’t have a clear recollection. Certainly, there were many other emotions and concerns to crowd out […]
The Only SECRET to Writing Well
My favorite journalism professor, a retired war correspondent, was definite about this one thing. The secret to becoming a great reporter? Quantity. Write a lot. Then write some more. There is no other secret, he told us aspiring reporters at the University of Wisconsin-Madison back in the 1970s. Being a perfectionist, and also lazy, I […]
My 65th Birthday
I dreaded it for months. But my 65th birthday came and went a week ago and life is still good. Grand, in fact. Despite recurrent depression, despite self esteem issues, despite everything about myself that I’d like to change, I am so looking forward to what lies ahead. Why do artificial milestones hang us up? […]
Finally, a Book Deal and Publication in the WaPo
It has been a long summer. I have been watching a pot that has refused to boil. Doing so has sucked some of the wind out of my sails. Treading water through June, July, and most of August was wearing me down – but that ends today with this link: Mission creep doesn’t benefit patients […]
Yes or No to Treatment? The Conundrum of Decision-Making When Elderly
Whenever I try to convey the message that an aggressive treatment might not be in the best interests of an elderly patient, that message is at risk of being drowned out by the memory of a medical success story. “My Aunt Mary didn’t want the heart surgery, but we talked her into it and she […]
Reinvent Yourself. Get a Truck. Write a Book.
Jumping in with an update so you don’t think we’ve gotten lost. Here’s the back-of-the-envelope: Sam bought a 10-year-old Chevy pickup truck. It’s red. It looks shiny and new. I think it represents his final conversion to island man. He’s got some practical reason about how it will be easier to get fixed than his Mini Cooper. Pretty sure […]