New York Times

In Palliative Care, Comfort Is the Top Priority

Last year, when an oncologist advised that Betty Chin might benefit frompalliative care, her son Kevin balked. Mrs. Chin, a retired nurse’s aide who lives in Manhattan’s Chinatown, was undergoing treatment for a recurrence of colorectal cancer. Her family understood that radiation and chemotherapy wouldn’t cure her, but they hoped doctors could keep the cancer

A New Vision for Dreams of the Dying

One evening in the late fall, Lucien Majors, 84, sat at his kitchen table, his wife Jan by his side, as he described a recent dream. Mr. Majors had end-stage bladder cancer and was in renal failure. As he spoke with a doctor from Hospice Buffalo , he was alert but faltering. In the dream,

In India, Dispensers of Balm Travel to Death’s Door

A white van coursed through narrow roads along the monsoon-soaked coastline of Kerala, a state in southwestern India. Inside, Radha Upasarna, a volunteer, and two nurses looked over the roster of patients they would visit, most of whom had cancer or heart disease or were paraplegic. As they bumped along through the area’s villages, the

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