One-Armed Paper Hanger
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Martha said that if she had surgery to remove the cancer in her arm, then God would not heal her. What if she was right?
Death with dignity and Lady Gaga?
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
I am certain Lady Gaga was talking about something other than dying with dignity in her song, Do What U Want (with my body), but that's what I heard.
Devil on the Cross
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
This book knocked my socks off! I've read some African authors like Chinua Achebe, but Devil on the Cross was an epiphany for me.
JOY
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Recently during a zoom session I attended, we were asked where we find joy in the midst of everything; I was not very successful...
This Can't Be Happening!
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
In a year filled with heartache and distress, it was probably the saddest thing I have heard: patients with COVID-19 saying, "This can’t be happening. It's not real!"
That's a Great Question
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Why do we love the pathos of fictional demise, yet we cannot generate meaningful interest in our own mortality?
My Way
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
In 1969, Frank Sinatra recorded a song about a man looking back over his life, reviewing his successes, failures, and legacy. What was it about a number that begins, “And now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain…” that made it both popular and enduring?
Why do it? Why write it?
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
“How can you stand to be around all that suffering and dying?” We each do what we have gifts for; hell for me would be being a 5th grade teacher…
Literary Dying
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Every person who has ever existed who is not alive today has died. Some recorded what they thought and felt about their mortality, what it might be like, what might come after...
Best Care is Palliative Care!
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Best supportive care must include palliative care, which improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with life-threatening illness, and, in some cases, might even extend life expectancy.
Let me breathe
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
I can't breathe! You take my breath away! Though the literal meaning of these two phrases is the same, their messages are profoundly different.
Believe what you see or see what you believe?
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
"Since COVID-19 is a hoax, I can’t be dying from it!" Do you believe the evidence you see or only see what you already believe?
Caring for stupid
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
The sign at the demonstration read, “We are NOT all in this together!”...the vital lesson of the current crisis is not whether certain governors went too far or not far enough, whether President Trump is a stable genius or a dithering fool...the system is inadequate and unjust...
Stock Your Pantry, Stock Your Life
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
I’m 65 years old and have a few chronic health conditions, so this puts me at a higher risk for complications from COVID-19...Plagues happen, people get sick and many die, this is the
fragility of life, and it has ever been so.
fragility of life, and it has ever been so.
I believe in facts
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
It is hard to believe that I need to say this, but I believe in facts...Developing COVID-19 testing kits will be simple compared to recovering society's trust in the information it is given.
We'd Be Happier If We Were Crying
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Jem Finch got it right. Jem, Atticus' Finch's son in To Kill a Mockingbird saw people he had taught to respect send an innocent man to death, saw everything he thought his world stood for collapse. And he wept. America today, like fictional Maycomb, Alabama, is angry. Anger is easy but it doesn't change anything. Crying is something healing, something we can do together.
Mortality and Monty Python
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead! The medieval English village is squalid, the undertaker’s lackey pushes a handcart through the town, amassing putrefying corpses ... an old man objects, "I'm not dead!" But what did the devastation of the Black Death add to our thinking about life and death?
We Could Be Doing So Much Better
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
We treat our health care system as if it were the best in the world; we embrace the idea that medicine can treat, can cure virtually any disease. We pay far more for health care than anyone else on the planet, we should expect miracles. But that fantastic idea is just that, a fantasy…
Because You Want to Do It Well
by Dr. Jeff Spiess
You only get to die once, so do it right!