摘要：I watched my patient's son cut up the bland, over-boiled hospital chicken and feed it to his mother, who was languishing in the neverland of dementia and stroke. I could see him thinking, "This? This is my mother?" It did seem hard to believe; the thousand individual, ordinary attributes that made this woman who she was had been wiped away. No more clunky piano playing, carefully applied lipstick, opinions on the economy, or babies dandled on the knee. For physicians and physicians-in-training, such a scene packs a hard punch because we wrestle personally with clinical decision making regarding the determination of capacity and end-of-life care, but we also watch helplessly as our own loved ones struggle with sporks and barely edible meat.
