Showing results for "Life-And-Death" in Physical Illness & Disease

With over 30 years of experience as a nurse, Anthea thought she had seen it all. But with Covid came the greatest trial, personally and professionally, of her life. Thrust into hourly challenges–many a matter of life and death–while on the Critical Care units of St George’s in south London, Anthea processed her shocking experiences through writing. It started with an email to request biscuits. But her appeal to help boost the morale of her fellow nurses soon turned into a series of astonishingly moving stories detailing the realities of being a front line worker.

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products.

Contrary to popular belief, death is not a moment in time, such as when the heart stops beating, respiration ceases, or the brain stops functioning. Death, rather, is a process—a process that can be interrupted well after it has begun. Innovative techniques, such as drastically reducing the...

Imagine you are a hunter-gatherer some 12,000 years ago. You've got a choice - carry on foraging or plant a few seeds and move to one of those new-fangled settlements down the valley. What you won't know is that urban life is short and riddled with dozens of new diseases; your children will be shorter and sicklier than you are; they'll be plagued with gum disease and stand a decent chance of violent death at the point of a spear. Why would anyone choose this? But choose they did.

In 2014, after fighting through yards of bureaucratic red tape, leaving her family, and putting her own health at risk in order to help suffering strangers, Kwan Kew Lai finally arrived in Africa to volunteer as an infectious disease specialist in the heart of the largest Ebola outbreak in history. What she found was not only blistering heat, inhospitable working conditions, and deadly, unrelenting illness, but hope, resilience, and incredible courage.

An unborn baby with a fatal heart defect . . . a skier submerged for an hour in a frozen Norwegian lake . . . a comatose brain surgery patient whom doctors have declared a "vegetable." Twenty years ago all of them would have been given up for dead, with no realistic hope for survival. But today...

Andrea Lytle Peet was thirty-three years old—an urban planner living in D.C., newly married, and a triathlete—when she received the death sentence of an ALS diagnosis (also known as Lou Gehrig's disease). After grappling with the fact that she will likely become paralyzed and die within two to five years, Andrea experienced an unexpected spark that changes her outlook in the most magnificent way.

Às vésperas de completar 23 anos, Suleika Jaouad ouviu as palavras que marcariam para sempre a sua vida: leucemia mieloide aguda. Assim começou sua longa batalha contra um inimigo invisível. Os quatro anos seguintes foram passados em quartos de hospital, lutando pela sobrevivência, enquanto lidava com as questões naturais da juventude e narrava sua experiência em uma coluna do The New York Times.

Here, in their own words, are seven children who confronted life-threatening illnesses such as cancer, sickle cell anemia, disability, and AIDS. Ranging in age from 7 to 17, these children from different backgrounds and with different personalities, share uncommon courage, a vibrant spirit, and piercing candor and eloquence about how to seize life, to glorify it, and be grateful for its gifts. Through poems written at Paul Newman's Hole in the Wall Gang Camp and conversations with loved ones, they reveal their attitudes towards life, illness, remission, religion, family, and friends.

When Amy Nappa was unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage IV-B uterine cancer, her life and that of her husband's, Mike, changed forever. But they weren't the only ones whose lives were touched by Amy's courageous journey into the waiting arms of her loving Savior. What started out as a private Facebook group intended to keep family and close friends apprised of Amy's medical condition grew to include hundreds, with thousands more reading publicly about Amy daily on social media.