Blood or Tears

Why do we doctors feel more comfortable with blood than with tears?

The Weight of Caring at Home

I wrote/drew this opinion piece for the LA Times two years ago, right before COVID drastically changed the landscape of… well, everything. Unfortunately, care for seriously ill loved ones has not gotten any easier during the pandemic, and patients and families still often struggle to meet the demands of illness in their living rooms. Now […]

Closing a Chapter

DURHAM, NC – When it comes to updating a website, I landed on Santa’s lump-of-coal list for yet another year. In my defense, it’s been a busy one. Apart from the usual pandemic chaos which continues to upend all of our lives, my spouse Bethany and I, along with our loyal pup Lily, have been […]

HOUSE HUNTERS: Nursing Facility DreamHome Edition

*As a palliative care doctor, I often spend time working alongside families that are trying to navigate the minefield of facility-based care. Whether they are learning the rules and coverage options for short-term rehab or trying to figure out how to arrange long-term care at an assisted living facility or nursing home, our country’s options […]

Medical Purgatory

As patients with COVID continue to fill emergency departments around the country, our ICU’s are increasingly filling with patients who are trapped in the hospital from complications of the virus. My latest illustrated Op-Ed for the LA Times highlights the plight of those trapped in medical purgatory. See the article HERE. Nathan A. Gray, MD.

Palliative Care in the Time of COVID

“As we take stock of masks, gloves, and ventilators, we must also be ready to dig deep into our reserves of patience, communication, and compassion.” Nathan A. Gray, MD

The woman who changed how we die…

When it comes to courageous healthcare heroes, it’s hard to think of anyone quite like Dame Cicely Saunders – nurse, social worker, doctor, and an extraordinary spark in bringing rigorous compassion to medicine… I’m excited to share my comic on the life of Dame Saunders published with Annals of Internal Medicine just in time for […]

Dying Words Aren’t What I Imagined

The things people say (and don’t say) at the end never cease to surprise me… Here’s the link to my comic, made for Spiralbound on Medium, about the tremendous privilege of sitting together alongside both the marvel and the messes of dying words.

Finding Humanity in Medicine’s High-Tech Death Ritual…

Durham, NC – My latest graphic medicine piece was published last week, and I’m grateful to Topic magazine for giving this story a platform. I tried hard to capture the pain and grit of one of the hard decisions that patients and doctors are forced to make in the midst of life-threatening illness. While I believe strongly […]

Flute Music, Existential Distress, and Sloppy Surgeons…

Here are a few recent Palliative Care cartoons from the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management and AAHPM Quarterly! I’m grateful, and still a bit surprised, to have my scatterbrained cartoons featured in respectable publications… Images copyright ©2018 Nathan A. Gray