As a continuation of the Now Times, a series about people’s experiences during the pandemic, I spoke to Dr. Kim Curseen, a palliative care geriatrician who works in Atlanta, Georgia. All throughout the pandemic, death and illness have been a topic on people’s minds. We have also heard many media stories about the challenges facing doctors and nurses during the pandemic. However, I wanted to get a sense of how palliative care physicians—doctors who had already been dealing with the questions and complexities of death and end-of-life care before COVID-19 hit—were affected by the pandemic. Dr. Curseen talks about how the pandemic has shaped her work and how the pandemic (prior to my expectations of what she would say) has made healthcare workers and patients more connected than they were before as people have had to adapt to the uncertainties and problems of the last year. Dr. Curseen talked about how COVID has made her and her patients meet over Zoom while in their homes instead of in a clinic or her office, and it’s given both parties intimate looks into one another’s lives. This interview offers us a look at what we might take for granted—whether in our healthcare system or beyond it—and start to wonder if we could recalibrate or rework these systems for the better. Something that hasn’t changed in Dr. Curseen’s work though, is the fundamental nature of palliative care, which, as she says, is that “We stand there with you, through your suffering.”
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