Living

There’s a lot of nonsense out there to listen to these days- but for many of us, the genius of podcasts is that they provide intelligent, interesting listening in a world that sometimes has gone mad. For those of you who are podcast devotees, or just have a computer on…

Continuing the theme of conversations with physicians about health care decision making, especially at the end of life: such advance care planning becomes all the more complex and challenging when there’s no clear person to step in to be a surrogate decision maker should something happen to you. Typically, patients…

Most seniors rely on Medicare to pay for their medical care. But for some 10 million low income seniors, help for medical costs also comes from Medicaid. With Medicaid coverage, such seniors receive assistance with not only small, out-of-pocket medical expenses but also the major costs of long-term nursing home…

Louise and Charles “LaLa” Evans were married for almost 60 years. Living in Mississippi, it’s clear from the thousands of photos they took over the years that theirs was a loving and sweet marriage. When Louise passed away, LaLa determined to honor his wife in a way the two had…

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg knows all too well what it means to lose a loved one: her husband died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2015. Having been through that experience, she has become a champion for promoting leave from work to deal with family illness or crisis. And last week, Facebook…

As we get older, we all experience the inevitable difficult times in life: illness arises, loved ones pass away, losses engulf us. These are challenging experiences, both for those going through them and for those who want to be of help. It’s sometimes hard to know what to say or…