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MERI Center Blog

November 2, 2020
Events

Among all the intense news of the world and the anxiety of our upcoming elections,  October brought with it the light and soft air of Autumn, two Full Moons, (including the Blue Moon which happened on the morning of Halloween) and the book launch of the writings of Merijane Block, in a new book entitled  “Everything Takes Longer Than You Think It Should or Thought it Would, Except for Life.”

 Merijane Block is the namesake of the MERI Center—Making Education Relevant and Integrated. On Thursday, Oct 29, the MERI Center hosted a Zoom book launch featuring  readings of Merijane’s eloquent and often difficult writings, by many of her close friends. Christopher DeLorenzo and Elizabeth Levitt, along with others, compassionately read through all of Merijane’s notebooks after her death in 2017 and put together an exquisite edition of her writings.  The book includes stories of her youth and freedom as a creative, artistic and curious woman of the 1960’s and 70’s, growing up on the East Coast  through her early life in San Francisco, walking everywhere on her strong “Legs” ( title of a piece in her book), exploring love and life in what came to be “her city,”  and continues through her introduction to her unexpected journey with metastatic breast cancer for 26 years. 

Meri tells us clearly in her poems, “Admonitions for the Uninitiated II” that she did NOT want to be seen as a “warrior,” a “fighter,” a woman embattled in her own bodily survival. She did not want to be called a “survivor.” She always insisted that she be seen as her...

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April 13, 2020
Events

THURSDAY, April 16, 2020 is “National Healthcare Decisions Day.” The MERI Center has been planning a number of activities for UCSF that now of course, must be postponed. However, the importance of completing Advance Directives for Healthcare has never been more critical. Here and now, in the “time of COVID-19” as we will all remember it well, the necessity of conversations about what we all would want or not want, in terms of medical interventions, is indeed at its peak.  As is the importance of having our wishes in writing for the healthcare system.

Below you will find some basic information and history about Healthcare Decisions day from two of the prominent organizations who have fostered the publicity of this day since its inception.

IF you have not completed your own Advance Directive for Healthcare and would like assistance, please consider the online (or in-person, once that can happen again) “What Matters Most” workshops offered by the MERI Center.

From the Conversation Project:

https://theconversationproject.org/nhdd/

“National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD) exists to inspire, educate and empower the public and providers about the importance of advance care planning. NHDD is an initiative to encourage patients to express their wishes regarding healthcare and for providers and facilities to respect those wishes,...

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March 16, 2020
Events

The UCSF MERI Center held a What Matters Most? A 2-part Advance Directive Workshop in the community on February 19 & March 4, 2020 at The Center for Creative Exploration, a non-profit arts education organization in Glen Park.  This was the first community session we held outside UCSF and it was organized by Suzanne Harris, a member of CCE and a UCSF employee.

The workshop took place at The Center for Creative Exploration, a wonderfully warm and inviting space and we sat in a circle while Redwing facilitated the workshop. In Session 1, we had 13 people in attendance & Redwing explained the importance of an advance directive, naming your agents, and clearly stating your wishes. She used Go Wish cards to help participants think about that is important to them if dealing with serious illness. In Session 2, we had 9 members join us in person and a couple more joining remotely via video. Participants had great questions as well as shared what they learned from their conversations with their prospective agents and in completing their advance directives. One person shared that she used very specific, medical language so her wishes would also be clear to medical providers after consulting with her agent, an acute care provider. Others shared their experiences with loved ones at the end of life and how that formed their own wishes. At the end, we notarized the advance...

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February 25, 2020
Events
​On February 11, 2020, Anne Germanacos hosted the MERI Center’s 2nd Community Engagement meeting at the Firehouse.  In attendance were Katie Doyle, Richard Cunningham, Ashly Cooper, Catherine Dodd, and Anne Jaquiss, plus our MERI Center representatives: Anne, our host, Mike Rabow, MD & Director of the Center, Redwing Keyssar, RN, Director of Patient & Caregiver Education, and our newest member, Gayle Kojimoto, Program Manager. 
February 20, 2020
Events

 

I recently had the opportunity to attend the inaugural National Clinicians Conference on Medical Aid in Dying (NCCMAID) in Berkeley, California, thanks to the generous sponsorship I received from the MERI Education Scholarship Fund in the spring of 2020. As a palliative care physician who cares for seriously ill patients, I found this educational experience to be incredibly rewarding and meaningful. While Medical Aid in Dying (MAID) has been legal in California since 2016, shepherding several of my patients through this process has taught me that we still have a lot of work to do to ensure that patients have equitable access to this service, and that providers can offer this important intervention knowing that we have the support of an effective and efficient institutional process behind us. Attending this conference has enabled me to feel more connected to a nation-wide network of competent and compassionate providers committed to this cause, as well as more comfortable providing this meaningful intervention to my patients who are suffering from terminal illness and strongly wish to pursue this option.

It was a huge privilege to meet so many providers from all over the country who offer MAID to their terminally ill patients, including Dr. Lonny Shavelson and his team. Lonny was the Chair of the NCCMAID conference and is the founding CEO of Bay Area End of Life Options, a medical practice devoted exclusively to the care of patients considering MAID.  Dr. Shavelson and his colleague, Thalia Wolf (RN), moderated several fascinating discussions on various...

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February 1, 2020
Events

Late Fragment  

by Raymond Carver

And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.

“Let us change the face of dying in our culture from one of fear and anxiety to one of acceptance and compassion. Inevitable as death is for all beings, let us work to create experiences that are positive, potent and transformational.” 

         (from “Last Acts of Kindness; Lessons for the Living from  the Bedsides of the Dying.”)

We ALL will be in positions to be “end of life doulas” at some time--assisting friends and loved ones in the dying process in whatever ways we can.  Our society has known for many years that there would not be enough healthcare professionals or trained homecare attendants to care for the 75 million baby boomers who will be dying over the next 20-30 years. With the “medicalization” of death and dying in the last century (meaning the 20th century), more and more people have died in hospitals or long- term care facilities, despite the fact that most people continue to state that they would prefer to die at home. In numerous studies in the past 10 years, approximately 80% of people surveyed stated their preference to die at home, yet only about 20% actually did.

In 2019, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, “for the...

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