Poetry/fiction.

George Budabin is a cancer survivor. What follows are his remarks commemorating Survivors Day 2006 at New York Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.

Objective: The purpose of this article is to provide a brief review of the empirical literature regarding the impact of advanced cancer on the marital relationship. The link between attachment, caregiving, and care-receiving behaviors are defined. Both are activated and challenged in this population because the continuity of the marital bond is threatened, as well as the balance of reciprocal caregiving, often resulting in heightened marital distress.

Methods: Emotionally focused therapy (EFT), based in a synthesis of systemic, experiential, and attachment theory, is introduced as a marital protocol to both conceptualize and potentially mitigate the level of increased marital distress, and to achieve reciprocal caregiving.

Results: Two case studies are presented and support the benefit of EFT for those couples facing end of life.

Significance of results: The findings from these case reviews advance the literature and offer an empirically validated marital therapy for this population. Such a protocol that emphasizes attachment theory and the inherent link to caregiving and care receiving may serve as a powerful tool to both explain and alleviate marital distress for couples facing end of life. Working models of attachment can contribute significantly to our understanding of why individuals' distress and their experience of emotional support from spouse caregivers vary in the context of end-stage cancer.

As a general practitioner with an interest in palliative medicine, occasionally patients with end-stage malignancies are referred to me. For these people the search for a panacea is well and truly over. Rather than searching for a cure for cancer they are now mostly searching for control of their “pain,” with all that that implies. One of my roles is to protect my patients from those peddling a panacea who in the process may impose burdensome costs, be they physical, psychological, or financial. The motives of those selling a “cure” may be altruism or greed, or indeed both.

The need to facilitate healthy bereavement, resulting from both deaths from life-threatening illnesses as well as violent, sudden deaths, is great. For the past 9 summers, Bereavement Services at Calvary Hospital, Bronx, New York, has sponsored a week-long day camp for bereaved children and adolescents. Each year the program expands by adding new activities to meet the needs of grieving children in therapeutic ways congruent with current research and timely clinical interventions. This article reflects on our experience, which has evolved and become stronger over the past 9 years. It is believed that this program is replicable and can be initiated and developed by other hospitals and organizations interested in developing similar programs.

Poetry/fiction.

There are certain things that you learn about people when you sleep in their beds, eat from their cupboards, commiserate with their family and friends. There are things that we waltz around and others that are apparent: that you were good, and raised your son with the utmost care. That you loved your husband. That you loved being a wife and mother.

Poetry/fiction.

Warp & Woof.

Clinical update: literature abstracts.

Stone Tears.

Calendar of events.