The Medical Naming of Death (Including Disability, Disease, and Damage) Within the Ds of Death framework, Diagnosis is not information. It is a declaration of loss. Diagnosis marks the moment when medicine names an ending—of bodily continuity, assumed futures, identity, and agency—while the person remains alive. It is the point at which ambiguity collapses and consequence becomes unavoidable. Disability, disease, and damage are not separate deaths within this framework. They

A life-threatening or life-changing diagnosis is not a single loss. It is a cascade  of losses that unfold over time—some immediate, some delayed, some invisible to everyone but the person carrying the body that has changed. Below is an exploration of that grief, its emotions, and its impact. The First Loss: The Assumption of Tomorrow Before the diagnosis, there is often an unspoken belief: My body will carry me forward. A diagnosis fractures that assumption. Suddenly, the fu

Family Coping with Illness and Death Holidays are built on rhythm—shared meals, familiar music, traditions that return us to ourselves. A hospital interrupts that rhythm completely. Time there does not move by calendar days or festive markers, but by vitals, rounds, alarms, and waiting. When illness or death enters the holidays, celebration becomes suspended, replaced by a quieter, heavier kind of presence. The Collision of Worlds Outside the hospital walls, the season insist