Thank you to everyone who joined us for this session!

For this session we read a book chapter titled “I’m Losing My Patients ” by Hilton Koppe from One Curious Doctor, posted below.

Our prompt was: “Write about the gift of knowing we are mortal.”

Participants are warmly encouraged to share what you wrote below (“Leave a Reply”), to keep the conversation going here, bearing in mind that the blog of course is a public space where confidentiality is not assured.

Also, we would love to learn more about your experience of these sessions, so if you’re able, please take the time to fill out a follow-up survey of one to two quick questions!

Please join us for our next session Monday February 12th at 6pm EST, with more times listed on our Live Virtual Group Sessions.

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I’m Losing My Patients by Hilton Koppe from One Curious Doctor

The blank death certificate sits in front of me.  No matter where a life starts, where it ventures, 
the Medical Certificate of Death is the concluding punctuation mark on a person’s medical 
narrative. 
     I approach the completion of the death certificate with reverence.  My final task in the care of 
a patient.  A moment to pause. Reflect. Say goodbye.  To honour their life within the rigid confines 
of a bureaucratic document.  
     This ritual is becoming increasingly frequent.
     My patients have been growing older with me.  Despite medicine’s advances and my best 
efforts, they are dying.  It is their time.  I’m losing my patients.
     Just last month, I lost three.  Lilly, my oldest patient, was an elegant matriarch.  Each of her 
frequent visits ended with her gently touching my arm and saying, “Bless you, Hilton”.  I had cared 
for her husband Don before his death.  Now it was Lilly’s turn.  Her heart was failing. “I hope that
one night I will go to sleep and wake up dead.  Just like Don did.”  Her wish came true a few days 
ago.  Who’s going to bless me now?
     Len had been a child throughout Germany’s bombing of London.  I had once ruined his 
Christmas by sending him to hospital to have a heart pacemaker inserted.  He would have died 
without it.  He wasn’t ready for that.  The pacemaker kept him going for another decade.  Not 
always easy years.  But “better than the alternative”, as he often said.  Len was a poet.  Each visit 
to me was accompanied by the gift of a poem, “From when the muse was upon me”.  The last 
time I saw him he told me he was feeling better than he had for years.  Another gift.  He woke up 
dead the following week. 
     Joe had been a postman during the times when delivering the mail included many a garden 
path conversation.  Even as his dementia progressed, Joe still enjoyed animated conversations.  I 
loved how his disconnection with the present transported us to a simpler time.  Until that gift too 
was snuffed out by dementia’s relentless march.
     I finish writing the death certificate.  I pause and offer gratitude for the blessings, the poems, 
the conversations and all the other gifts my patients have shared with me, and I walk out to greet 
my next patient.  The waiting room is full.  Many familiar faces look my way.
     I am troubled by a nagging thought, a persistent pestering question.  Who will be next? 


Credit: Hilton Koppe