What Would Jesus Twitter?

Christian Sinclair alerted me to this site, which he called a good taste fail. I couldn't have said it better myself. 

The site is called Tweeji and is like Twitter, except all the tweets are from dead celebrities—Bettie Page, Shakespeare, and yes, even Jesus Christ himself. 

Today, Jesus tweeted, "My day is about to end and I never got to go Jew fishing!?!? I need to buy a planner." 

Are you kidding me? Is it just me or is this incredibly tacky? 

Other tweets seem more like actual quotes from the famous figures, just abbreviated into tweet-like spelling.

Walt Disney tweeted today, "I believe that entertainment usually fulfills sm vital & normal curiosity 4 every man, woman & child who seeks it." 

Would this site be funny if the application was better, or is the whole concept a fail from the start? It's definitely sensationalistic and interesting on that level, but once you get beyond the shock-value of the concept, most of the tweets are either completely straightforward and a little boring or so shocking that they can't help but be offensive. 

Check it out. Let me know what you think. 

Palliative Care Grand Rounds, Volume 1, Issue 3

Welcome to volume one, issue 3 of Palliative Care Grand Rounds!

Here you will find an overview of what's been happening in the cyberworld regarding palliative care, death, dying, end-of-life care, and all sorts of related topics for the past month. 

Entries in this series are rotating throughout palliative-care-oriented blogs and are hosted on the first Wednesday of each month. Next month's series will be hosted by Thaddeus Pope at Medical Futility on May 6th. 

There is a lot here, so if you want to read a bit at a time and come back later to read some more, that might be a good way to approach it. I do realize it looks overwhelming :)

That said, let's jump right in ... 

This month, a study was released in JAMA telling us that terminal cancer patients who are self-defined as religious are nearly three times as likely to seek life-sustaining measures near the end, and are also less likely to prepare for death—in terms of advance directives, living wills, healthcare advocates.

Also this month, Washington's Initiative 1000 went into law, legalizing physician assisted suicide. One stipulation of the law is that hospitals and individual practitioners can choose to opt out of the legislation. The has the potential to cause massive confusion. As a Washington-based nurse practitioner, risaden of Risa's Pieces, has an excellent post on his thoughts on this law, what he has encountered related to it, and how it compares to Oregon's law.  

Taking a harder look at the risks of skiing without a helmet, and the signs of serious head trauma in the wake of Natasha Richardson's death—a sad reminder that death by falling is the third most common cause of accidental death. 

60-Second Psych in Scientific American takes a look at whether the suicide of Nicholas Hughes, the son of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, was due to hereditary causes. Children of mother's who kill themselves are more likely to commit suicide ... but is that correlation or genetics?

If the Rapture occurred, what would happen to your bank account? That's right, the Christian Rapture. Well, Mark Head thinks that in the event of the Rapture, in the midst of God's eternal glory, you will still be worrying about what is happening to your financials down on earth, So, for a $40 fee, he has a service that sets up an email that can be sent to your relatives with your bank account information. (And you can totally trust Mr. Head with your financial information.) "Christians on call" for the site log on to it to keep it going. If no one logs on for three days, it is assumed Rapture has taken place, and the emails are sent out. I guess you'd want to pick your most heathen-y relatives, just to ensure they're left behind to receive the email. How do you start that conversation?

This piece is a real doozy. How you go from normal life and a simple spinout in snowy conditions to freezing to death, or nearly freezing to death. And what it's like to freeze to death. Fascinating. Well-written. From Outside magazine online. 

A story about taking care of Sean, a former Fortune 500 company worker with early onset Alzheimer's, from the blog Confessions of a Young Looking Social Worker. 

A geropsychiatrist writes about two old goats—one figurative and one literal—both using the same meds to good purpose. Funny!

A touching piece that comes very close to my interests. A medical librarian writes about her mother-in-law's good death from cancer—thanks largely to the help of good hospice care—and the bittersweet satisfaction that brought the family. 

The blog Palliative Care Success discusses a NEJM article that shows high-spending regions of the country are more likely to recommend hospitalization for an 85-year-old patient with an exacerbation of end-stage congestive heart failure. They were also three times as likely to admit this patient to intensive care, and 30% less likely to discuss palliative care with the patient and family. The post suggests Advanced Palliative Care Organizations (APCOs) can help reduce the number of people dying in hospitals and reduce the number of days patients spend at the hospital near the end, but APCOs are limited in how many physicians and other professionals they are drawing. 

The relationship between palliative care and the church, the spiritual role of palliative care ... but also the palliative care needed by a dying church (in this particular community) are all addressed in this beautiful blog entry written by a former pastor and Tampa-based hospice worker. 

Losing a laptop becomes an opportunity to explore advance directives as a metaphor for being prepared for the death of technology with backup and storage. 

Fran Johns, one of my favorite bloggers, has a beautiful piece on the therapeutic and restorative qualities of pulling Oxalis. Fran is part of the slow-blogging movement and does not update often, but when she does, it is always something amazing. Be sure to bookmark her site. 

At The Mom and Me Journals dot Net, Gail Rae writes about donating some of her mother's items to a garage sale. The need to de-clutter leads her to rid the place of her deceased mother's items as if they are just things, but one special piece, a tiara, needs an important home. 

Dethmama finds welcome relief from her work as a hospice nurse in the form of a new puppy named Olive. She has also posted a long-awaited sequel to a great story, Hospice Hitwoman and the C.Y.A., about a family who is anxious to see their loved on pass away, before the right time even. 

At the Pallimed blog, Dr. Drew Rosielle discusses a study that shows most people do not understand the actual details of resuscitation, and many would choose to not have chest compressions, shocks IVs through the groin, even though those are sometimes regular parts of resuscitation. Dr. Rosielle also has an excellent post on JAMA's series on palliative care of latinos. 

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Seth Grahame-Smith has reworked Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice to include zombie battles. You can find a fantastic (in every sense of the word) excerpt here. 

If you want some death at the movies, check out Sunshine Cleaning, an irreverent and touching comedy about two sisters who open an industrial cleaning business—specifically cleaning up after dead people. The film stars Emily Blunt, Amy Adams, and Alan Arkin. 

Is it ethical for a wife to use a deceased spouse's sperm for artificial insemination? The Health Monitor at Radiography Schools takes up this issue and contrasts it with other sperm-donor controversies of late.

Is there such a thing as a style for your illness? Dana Jennings writes about getting a buzz cut to develop a tough, "Prison Break"-esque style for his prostate cancer treatent. For him, the haircut is a "visible bulwark against the tide of emasculating side effects caused by the treatment of prostate cancer."

Thanks to all who sent in suggestions! I'm sure there is even more out there I couldn't get to. And if you're interested, here's where you can find issues 1 and 2. 

Newman's Own Legacy

Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, Orville Redenbacher, Paul Newman? ... It's been a few days since Paul Newman's death, and it occurs to me, I'm 30, and I really only know Paul Newman through movie roles I've made a point of going back to look at—Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Long Hot Summer, Cool Hand Luke, The Towering Inferno. Yes, he has done some modern projects, but his contemporary fame is no competition for the A-List status he once held in Hollywood. So I wonder if people 10 years younger than me and beyond will come to know Newman primarily from his branded image on his product packaging. His cartoony, smiley face—a caricature of the genius he was.

Newman began the food products company—Newman's Own—to promote charitable giving. He called it "shameless exploitation in the pursuit of the common good." One can assume he meant exploitation of his own celebrity image and endorsement.

It will be interesting to see if that image becomes his enduring legacy for generations to come ... or if his outstanding body of film work is enough to outshine the pasta sauce and dog treats people see every day in the grocery store.

Lessons Learned from Tim Russert's Death

I missed this story when it first came out, so it's a few weeks old, but it's a personal essay by 50-year-old writer Michael Bicks, who sought medical treatment for a heart attack, only because of the lessons he learned from Tim Russert's death.

Symptoms first arose on a a regular bike ride with friends:

"The ride a few Saturdays back was a tough one ... by the third hill I started to feel nauseated. Figuring that was probably a result of the four beers and large Chinese dinner the night before, I kept going. Twenty-five miles into the ride, I had fallen to the back of the pack. I was short of breath and wondering how I was going to make it much farther."

Eventually Bicks stops to have his wife give him a ride home, where he lays down on the bed. It was only after he thought of Tim Russert's recent shocking death that it occurred to him he might be having a heart attack. He writes, "Because at the right moment I thought of Tim Russert, I am one of the lucky ones. I get to hug my wife and my kids, understand how wonderful my friends are and realize exactly how much I love my life. It is a debt I can never repay."

Bicks elaborates: "As in Tim Russert’s case, there were no warning signs. No sign I was suffering from coronary artery disease. A piece of plaque in one of my arteries just broke off and created a massive blood clot. When it did, I suffered a severe heart attack. If I had not gone to the hospital, I might very well have died."

This is the power a celebrity can have over a media-obsessed society. When they die in a noteworthy way, it can not just shock people, but if used to proper advantage, it can also educate ... and apparently in this case, even save lives. It's uplifting to see something positive happen as the result of a sad situation. See, media isn't all bad.

When a Celebrity Gets Sick

Today on the Diane Rehm show, Dr. Deepa Subramaniam, Director of the Brain Tumor Center at Georgetown University Hospital, points out a difficulty faced when a person of notoriety, such as Senator Kennedy, is diagnosed with a serious condition. The media coverage makes it difficult for Kennedy and his family to contain their discussion about his condition amongst themselves and their medical team. Frank talk about his chance of survival, what will happen to him, how his cancer should be treated, is being played out in newspapers, on the radio, on TV, around the world. And Dr. Subramaniam mentions this can be added stress not just for Dr. Kennedy but for other people with malignant brain tumors as well. She notes the presence in the media of phrases like "grim diagnosis" and "survival rate of a year" in the media. That would be hard to hear if you had a malignant glioma, even if you had already heard it from your physician.