Winter Issue
February 2004
For thousands of years, doctors became doctors because they wanted to better the lives of their patients. Now, just in the past decade, it has become clear that it can be just as important for them to better the deaths of their patients.
Susan Brajtman has always possessed a passion for patient care. “I had thought about being a nurse since I was a little girl,” she explains. “Nursing has allowed me to fulfill two of my basic desires: the desire to care for people, and the desire to be intellectually challenged.”
Faced with the inescapable finality of the end stages of a terminal illness, how many of us would be willing to expedite our last breath by deliberately choosing its timing, context and circumstances in search of a “better way to die?”
There's no disputing that death, like taxes, is certain in this world. Benjamin Franklin’s insight more than 200 years ago was by no means unique. In the same way that death is certain, the topic of death and dying is inevitable in literature.
Bravo! and News
