This passage is from Chapter 15, My Brother, A Dying Man. “During that winter and spring of 1996, my brother’s care and our visits took on a pattern that became part of the routine of our daily lives. It wasn’t that we weren’t concerned by what was happening to him or did not care anymore. […]

This passage is from Chapter 15. “Near the end of August, during a doctor’s visit the doctor started explaining that my brother’s condition was terminal and he asked if we wanted him to die at home. What a question, we did not want my brother to die at all; however, we knew that we had […]

In Chapter 15, My Brother, A Dying Man, I describe my changing relationship with my brother. “On that Thanksgiving, we decided that we should all gather at my brother’s house and celebrate the holiday together. We brought all of the food to make a traditional Thanksgiving meal at his house and the children made some […]

This passage is from Chapter 15. “We soon learned that not all aides were created equal in their compassion and dedication to their duties in providing my brother’s care. In the health care profession some health care providers approach the care of their patients as merely a job to be performed and others treat it […]

This passage is from Chapter 15, My Brother, A Dying Man. “I never had any direct experience with home health care services. I wanted to be involved with my brother’s treatment until I was sure that he was being well cared for by the health care providers or health aides. Home health care is a […]

This passage is from Chapter 15. I describe my reaction to one of my brother’s friends, who was a lawyer, yet still stood by and did nothing to prevent my brother from signing the ill-fated restaurant lease. “The question that occurred to me at the time and which still remains unanswered is why did my […]

Chapter 15, My Brother, A Dying Man, continues with a description of my brother’s home health care. When my brother first started with his home care, he primarily stayed in bed and needed help just to move from the bed to the reclining chair. He could stand with a little help but was already unable […]

This passage is from Chapter 15. “I told the psychiatrist at our meeting and later at the group meeting that was part of the discharge process that I would need his opinions in the form of an affidavit. Well, as you might imagine, there is nothing that scares a doctor more than asking him to […]

This passage is from Chapter 15, My Brother, A Dying Man. “I met with the psychiatrist a day or two before my brother was discharged for two reasons, mainly to obtain a better understanding of his level of mental impairment and secondarily to see if I could get the psychiatrist to give me some information […]

This passage is from Chapter 15. “To prepare for his home health care, while my brother was still in the hospital, we cleared out his family room on the first floor of his house and discarded some of the furniture. We rented a hospital bed and placed it in the center of the room along […]