My 54-year-old patient was alone in the intensive care unit, with no family or friends in his life. As a newly minted doctor years ago, my mind was usually occupied with beeps and buzzers providing me technical information to help calculate choices about patients' care. That is what I try to do as a physician, including, of course, what they tell me in the silences. She came to help me, but it turns out some really personal things in our background are weirdly similar. It is a rare patient who asks me for euthanasia, but it is nearly universal that dying patients seek help with suffering.

Source: CNN March 20, 2018 11:48 UTC