5 minute read The following post will include some slight navel gazing and somewhat excessive contemplation of one particular license group. I hope the reader will indulge me. I am a licensed marriage and family therapist (LMFT). My doctoral training is in medical family therapy. I graduated from the same master’s program as my dad, […]
Helping a Husband Be More Than a “Pillar of Strength”
Original post available here. One day, while working as a clinical psychologist in a primary care practice, I was asked by the family doctor scheduled to meet that morning with Lisa, a 72-year-old woman with moderate dementia, to stop by and see her 75-year-old husband, Dennis, for counseling for possible depression. Within the hour, I […]
“Amour” or Love Among the Ruins
5 minute read. Original post link. Nominated for five Academy Awards, “Amour” is a film about love and death. (Read no further if you haven’t seen the film and don’t want to know who dies and how.) The setting is Paris, the language French, but any resemblance to a conventional French film about light-hearted romance […]
Home-Based Care is Rising. So Must Family-Oriented Care.
5 minute read In the pre-Covid years, when I was the family caregiver for my mother with mild dementia and chronic pain, I became the point person for her home-based care team. I was forever on the phone managing the shifting schedules of her home health aides and receiving instructions from her home-based physical therapists […]
Caring for Decades: A Story of Parents, Children, and Special Needs
5 minute read In 1974 Sue delivered two beautiful identical twin daughters. They were the “talk of the hospital,” she says. They were still talking days later, but for different reasons, when the girls had their first seizure in the nursery. At three months, Kaylie and Kylie were diagnosed with spastic quadriplegic cerebral palsy. The […]
My Pandemic Spouse-Buddy
4 minute read I can hear her soft voice, with its slight Long Island intonations, murmuring in the next room as she comforts her many struggling psychotherapy clients about the pandemic during their telehealth appointments with her. My office—once our adult son’s childhood bedroom with YA titles and high school notebooks still on the bookshelves—is […]
Broadening the Scope of Patient-Centric Docs
Physician greets older male patient. Physician greets patient’s adult daughter. Physician asks about patient’s conditions. Physician asks for daughter’s input. Physician does physical examination. Physician makes recommendations and writes scripts. Physician asks patient and daughter if they have questions. A very normal-sounding outpatient medical visit, right? What could possibly be wrong with this picture? For […]