As America’s health care debate reaches a fevered pitch, The New Yorker’s always excellent Atul Gawande reports on an aspect of care that is often overlooked. While most of our medical resources are aimed at “intensive, one-off procedures,” we lose sight of the heroism of incremental care. This kind of care is all about developing a longterm relationship with a doctor. And that relationship can often begin with something as simple (and as powerful) as a nod: “[Dr.] Loder gave a sympathetic shake of her head, and that was enough to win the woman’s confidence. The patient knew that she’d been heard by someone who understood the seriousness of her problem — a problem invisible to the naked eye, to blood tests, to biopsies, and to scans, and often not even believed by co-workers, family members, or, indeed, doctors.” (Imagine someone saying, Take two of these and call me in the morning, and really meaning it…)

+ “What people forget is, those who end up on opioid pain management have usually tried everything else unsuccessfully.” We hear a lot about the opioid crisis. We hear less about patients who need the drugs to function. From Stat: A civil war over painkillers rips apart the medical community.

+ “I don’t know when death will arrive. It could be a few months or a few years. In all honesty, that part doesn’t really scare me anymore, and I don’t devote much time or energy dwelling on it. What does scare me, however, is the strong likelihood that I will spend my last days on Earth unable to do the normal things that make life enjoyable, losing my autonomy and dignity, being barely alive yet in severe pain, drifting in and out of a morphine-induced haze while my loved ones take shifts on a deathwatch. That is not how I want to die. Would you?” Roger Kligler, MD, in Boston Mag: Why I’m suing Massachusetts for the right to die on my own terms.