Texas Likes the Death Penalty More Than Science

This should end the death penalty, but nothing else has.

Prayer for the Dying

Watch, O Lord, with those who wake, or watch, or weep tonight, and give your angels charge over those who sleep.
Tend your sick ones, O Lord Christ;
Rest your weary ones;
Bless your dying ones;
Soothe your suffering ones;
Pity your afflicted ones;
Shield your joyous ones.

O Lord Jesus, who once died in agony, have mercy on those who will die today.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, grant that they may breathe their last in peace with you. †

Time to Talk Turkey

Slide from Engage with Grace.

Can you answer those questions? Does someone else name you in their answers? Maybe life and death is worth 2 minutes of both your time while everyone is gathered together this holiday season.

Once upon a time, death was a binary thing; a man walked to work alive, but then he fell off a building and he was dead. A woman bled to death in child birth. A grandfather clutched his chest, took his pulse, and collapsed, dead. Modern medical science took this simple dichotomy and added a hundred and one shades of gray between breathing, laughing, crying, working, sweating life and cold, stiff death.

A wise doctor is fond of saying that the biggest shortcoming of American medicine is the failure to discern the difference between could and should, so you are largely on your own. "We could try chemo," the doctor will say. "We could stent that artery." "We could put in a feeding tube and help you breathe with a tube and a machine when you need it." No one will say, "Should we?" unless you do, and no one will know how to answer for you unless you talk about it with them now.

Michael Crichton, MD

Not the first graduate of the Best Medical School to be better suited to some career other than being a doctor (and not likely the last, either), he did a decent job writing for ER back in the day. Mainly, though, we were surprised to hear he was ill, let alone dead.

Dr Michael E DeBakey, heart surgeon and ambassador to the world, dead at 99

Dr Debakey, the surgeon who invented a technique to repair a ruptured thoracic aorta with Dacron, as well as performing the first carotid endarterectomy, the first coronary artery bypass graft (there is some debate about that one), the first heart transplant, and designing the first artificial heart--the man was the heart surgeon of heart surgeons to the point that you can't diagnose an aortic aneurysm without describing its DeBakey classification or operate on the heart or aorta without asking for a DeBakey clamp--died Friday night at The Methodist Hospital in Houston. The number of lives this man touched is truly, simply humbling: he operated on 60,000 patients himself, and every heart surgeon in the world trained with him or with someone he trained, a family tree of surgical training.

Last spring, Esquire interviewed him for a "What I've Learned" column. His wisdom, in his own words, is the most eloquent obituary.

How do you expect to die?

Geriatrician Joanne Lynn to an assembly of health policy makers:

“How many of you expect to die?” she asked. The audience fell silent, laughed nervously and only then, looking one to the other, slowly raised their hands. “Would you prefer to be old when it happens?” she then asked. This time the response was swift and sure, given the alternative. Then Dr. Lynn, who describes herself as an “old person in training,” offered three options to the room. Who would choose cancer as the way to go? Just a few. Chronic heart failure, or emphysema? A few more. “So all the rest of you are up for frailty and dementia?” Dr. Lynn asked.

The answer of most Americans, by default, is of course Yes, I'll take the slow decline and a feeding tube with as little dignity as possible, please. Disturbing, isn't it?

Tim Russert, RIP

Blogging the untimely death of the last American journalist worth watching on network TV at NYTimes.

Saddest Little Video Game Ever

Passage. Be warned: It is heavy on the sentimentality.