Called to the bedside of someone critically or chronically ill, what should you bring, what can you do, what must you know, what will you say? Likely you've already sat with a grandparent, parent, brother, sister, lover, or friend in a hospital or nursing home and found yourself disturbed by certain medical protocols, mystified by lab reports, frustrated by insurance forms, benumbed by pharmocracy, thinking taboo thoughts about life or loss, and yourself on the verge of falling sick. LONG DAYS, LAST DAYS is for all of us who sooner or later will be sitting for hours with someone we love, senses heightened in the moment but all the while trying to imagine what lies ahead. Arranged alphabetically, this guide offers astute, practical, single-page entries on 200 topics including Advocacy, Checklists, Directives, Gatekeeping, Hospice, Intensive Care, Laughter, Medicine Cabinets, Mutual Peril, Overnight Bags, Pain relief, Sadness, Sex, Waiting, Wills, Young People, and Zero Visibility. You can learn to distinguish Acuteness from Emergency from Urgency, what to do with Blankets and Pillows, where to seek Help, how to hire caregivers, and what questions to ask Agencies, Nurses, Physicians, Social Workers. You may be curious as to why Keys, Nails, Teeth, and Tubes take on such significance. And you may be anxious to know how best, meanwhile, to attend to your own needs. As a case manager, Hillel Schwartz has worked with clients, families, and friends confronting brain injury, breast cancer, lung cancer, prostate cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, heart disease, kidney failure, paralysis, stroke, and Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia, as well as with households coping with dialysis, colostomies, paraplegia, memory loss. As an historian of medicine and technology, he can put in social and cultural context the language, traditions, and expectations that are often at odds among patients, nurses, internists, specialists, surgeons, and caregivers. All of this is reflected in the rich text of LONG DAYS, LAST DAYS, which has an extensive index and links to online resources and further reading/viewing. It is also thoroughly internally hyperlinked so that readers may move easily across associated topics, as from Noise to Snoring to Roommates to Respite. Unlike books on death and dying, spiritual communion or grief and bereavement, this guide takes into account the entire environment of the bedside, its shifting calendar and climate, its terrain and geography, its sense of presence and absence, its contests and compromises, its physical and ethical demands, and the relationships forged or strained, assumed or resumed. Long Days may not necessarily move through Last Months to Last Breaths, but for days, weeks, or months the bedside has its own ecology, for which few of us are ever fully prepared. Read in draft versions by dozens of laypeople as well as family physicians and neurologists, hospice nurses and psychologists, psychiatric social workers, sociologists, and social philosophers, LONG DAYS, LAST DAYS has been found to be equally useful for friends, families, and professionals, for those new to the bedside as for those returning yet again. Open it to a topic of immediate concern and follow the links. . . or look for subjects that have puzzled you in the past . . . or read it from start to finish in anticipation of what you may need to know in a not-so-distant future. Some entries are meditative, some sheerly informative; some are forthright, some celebratory; some ask for boldness, some for reflection. All told, they help ground and empower each of us in our times at the bedside, helping those we love, palm resting lightly, warmly, on the Breastbone.

Written from the perspective of Clancy Jasper, a Border Collie mix dog, "Did You Know My Grandma?" is a collection of stories and poems. Luttjohann writes about Clancy's adventures of caring for his Grandma Claudia who had dementia, diabetes, arthritis, and other challenges. There is a mix of humor with doses or reality. This book is great for children or adults and includes lots of pictures of Clancy and his grandma.

A FINAL EXAMINATION The basic premise of A Final Examination is that as I approach the later stages of fifty years of a life in medicine I have borne witness over the last generation to what would appear to be the gradual decline of family medicine to the point of imminent dissolution. I am well aware that this reality does weigh heavily on my heart and soul as a physician and for that matter throughout my being. I composed a memoir as what seemed to me the most accurate way to dramatize the nature of this loss - beginning with looking at the genesis of my life in medicine, i.e. where doctors come from, and an extensive and personal look at the context and content of a doctor's life, leading to the magic that can occur between doctor and patient. I am a private person. I have always valued the anonymity with which I have been able to live to work and work to live. I want for nothing that I do not already have, certainly not any form of public visibility or recognition. But what other form of revelation can substantiate my plea for concern about medicine's future than one based on open and honest self-revelation, one in which many of my patients also generously have joined in? Who might want to read this book? If you have never had the need for the intimate and trusting support of a competent physician, you will be fortunate to reach your life's conclusion and be able to continue to say the same, as we all will become older, we all make errors of judgment, we all suffer misuses and abuses, we all meet with disease in some form - thus it is to be human - all of us, every manner of doctor included, eventually need a doctor. And this makes the possible disappearance of the traditional dynamic between doctor and patient in all of its manifestations relevant to us all. When you need to make your call, you will not want the medical profession to be as hollow and empty, as antiquated and obsolete as a telephone booth with a dangling defunct phone. At least the telephone booth was replaced with a new and better technology. Does anyone else out there think that our era is so rife with challenge and despair that it is no longer within the power of individuals and committed groups to envision and work toward positive change? The best of our forebearers, many of whom I reference in A Final Examination rejected that thought entirely. It would be my preference to do the same.

A Clinical Medical Assistant is a medical professional who performs a variety of functions to assist the physician in providing patient care and to keep the practice running smoothly. While a Clinical Medical Assistant may be required to perform some administrative tasks in a smaller practice, in large practices or facilities he or she will mainly provide services directly related to patient care. Where the Administrative Medical Assistant works mainly in the front desk and reception area of a practice, the Clinical Medical Assistant is often at the physician's side and works in close contact with the patients of the practice. This career is not ideal for everyone. In order to be successful as a Clinical Medical Assistant, one must have certain personality characteristics. First, he or she needs to be compassionate while still maintaining a professional distance. In this job, the assistant will work with people who are frustrated, anxious, tired, sick, and possibly dying. The assistant must have compassion and understanding in order to provide good treatment and to help meet the patients' needs. However, this compassion must be tempered with professional distance to keep the assistant from being overwhelmed by stress and grief. A successful Clinical Medical Assistant must also have a variety of specialized skills to perform this job correctly. He or she must have a good understanding of medical procedures and terminology in order to read and understand patient charts. The assistant must also be able to use the tools and equipment of the job, including stethoscopes, EEG and EKG machines, laboratory equipment, sterilization tools, and more.