When Pound Foolish Hurts
The following story is by James Bliwas from Ohio , a winner of the 2012 Costs of Care Essay Contest. When my 40-year old sister was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, her one, overriding wish as the days ticked down was to die in her own home with her husband Steve and me sitting next to her, eating meals she liked that we cooked as opposed to coping with the institutional food she was being served, and for her three beloved cats to be lying on the bed with her. It was a simple enough request, one that would comfort the patient and save medicine a lot of money. There wasn’t anything...
Read MoreUncertainty and the Challenge of Being an Informed Patient
The following anecdote is by Erin Plute, a medical student at Emory University from Marietta, Georgia, and a winner of the 2012 Costs of Care Essay Contest. The patient – blue-eyed, red-haired, and healthy but worried looking – guided the doctor’s hand to just below the angle of her jaw, where a small lump was barely palpable. She had first noticed the swollen lymph node after a cold and thought nothing of it at the time. But five months later, it was still there. She knew it was nothing, but she couldn’t shake the thought that it might be related to the...
Read MoreA Medical Student’s Dilemma
The following story is from Libertad Flores, a first year medical student at the Alpert Medical School of Brown UniversityI remember joking with Dad about how he’d outlive us all. He had gone vegetarian 10 years before I was born, never smoked, took vitamins, and asked for a designated driver after his annual Heineken at the neighbor’s Christmas shin-dig. He flossed, wore a seat belt, and looked forward to annual physicals. If I tried leaving our Michigan house in the winter with more than 3 inches of skin exposed, he would follow me to the door yelling “It’s no fun being...
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