In my next life, I want to come back as Dr. Kathy Selvaggi, the palliative care doctor who appears in a new Frontline documentary series about how our health-care system handles end-of-life care. I think we should all idolize clinicians who escort people to and from life — midwives, labor and delivery nurses on the one hand. Hospice nurses, chaplains, and palliative care physicians, on the other.
Dr. Kathy Selvaggi and Dr. Atul Gawande (author of Being Mortal
My best friend from college and I use a term “the hard professor,” as shorthand for situations where our heroic efforts haven’t felt good enough. It comes from an analogy I created to make a point. It worked like this: If you were in a class with a professor who, in 20 years of teaching, had never given a grade higher than a “B” and you earned a “B+,” would you be mad at yourself for not getting an “A?”
I’ve learned that when you lose perspective about the value of your efforts, it’s always nice to have a friend point out that you are in the hard professor’s class.
I was trying to explain to a male colleague why I was naming my new (at the time) website “Daughterhood.org.” He’s an expert on aging and shares responsibility with his sister for their mother’s care. So, I wanted his advice on creating a resource that helps families care for their parents.
When he heard the name of the website, his first reaction was: “So this isn’t for me?” A couple of other men were confused too.
They thought I was being impractical. Why would I go to the trouble and expense of building an organization to help people manage their parents’ care and then name the website in such an exclusive way – potentially losing half of an audience who would benefit from the information and resources.
As the first nursing home and assisted living facility residents get their COVID-19 vaccines, I feel like I’m seeing a little light at the end of the tunnel. I’ve been quiet on the blog this year because I’ve felt speechless – empty of any information, advice or even reassurance I could provide the millions of caregivers doing a hard job during the most difficult of times. I felt helpless as I watched the deaths mount and read story after story of isolation and disconnection.
I travel on airplanes a lot. Or at least I did before two weeks ago! Usually, my primary focus is on whether I can get a coffee refill and how much longer I can procrastinate doing work. So, basically, exactly the same as when I’m home minus the barking dog.
A big gust of turbulence can quickly change everything.
A bumpy ride doesn’t scare me, but it does refocus me, shifting my attention to the fact that I’m actually sitting in a tin can flying at 200 plus miles per hour 40,000 feet in the air and that there are other human beings with me. On the rare occasion we drop altitude suddenly, the worst-case scenario of plummeting out of the sky seems like a real possibility.