Health Affairs

Health Affairs, 25, no. 5 (2006): 1407-1411 doi: 10.1377/hlthaff.25.5.1407 © 2006 by Project HOPE	New Online   Getting Health Reform Done   After the State of the Union   Incremental Reform   E-Health in Developing World   Most-Read Articles in 2009

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Narrative Matters

My Mother, A Professional Patient

Steven A. Wartman

IF YOUR MOTHER IS ANYTHING LIKE MY MOTHER, this will make perfect sense. Shortly after becoming a widow fourteen years ago, my now eighty-eight-year-old mother began to progressively increase her schedule of doctor visits. She lives alone in a large apartment in Philadelphia, while I, a physician and her oldest son, throughout my career have lived and worked several states away. Despite—or perhaps because of—this, in recent years the number of phone calls from my mother about her medical care began to increase, with requests to find her a doctor, call a doctor for her, get her an . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Getting With The Program

 

Why Not Mom?

 

Six Months Later

 

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