Caregiving at the End (with Andy Clinnin)

The Doctor's Art

Henry Bair and Tyler Johnson

Medicine, Society & Culture, Health & Fitness, Philosophy

5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2022

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

On June 28, 2022, we released an episode featuring Ellen Dunphy, a 35-year old patient with a terminal diagnosis of gastric cancer who had been under the care of co-host Dr. Tyler Johnson. Ellen passed away a week later. Accompanying every step on her cancer journey was her husband, Andy Clinnin. In this episode, Andy joins us to share his experiences as Ellen’s caregiver and primary source of emotional support. Over the course of our conversation, we explore Andy and Ellen’s relationship from its beginnings all the way to her final days and after. Andy’s reflections on these challenging moments, perhaps paradoxically, has much to teach us about what it looks like to courageously make the most of life, however much of it remains.

In this episode, you will hear about:

A synopsis of how Ellen came to be in Dr. Johnson’s care - 1:03
How Andy and Ellen met, and their relationship leading up to her diagnosis - 6:44
Andy’s perspective on Ellen’s diagnosis - 10:15
What it was like for Andy to learn about Ellen’s diagnosis and how he adjusted to being her caregiver - 16:26
Andy’s reflections on the experience of having Dr. Johnson as Ellen’s oncologist - 21:39
How Andy helped Ellen think through her priorities at the end-of-life - 27:15
How being with his partner until the end has changed the way Andy sees life - 35:46
How California’s End of Life Treatment Act allowed Ellen to control how her life story ended - 43:14
Andy’s advice for other caregivers on how to best take care of themselves so they may best provide care to their loved ones - 51:33

Ellen Dunphy’s one-woman play “Imaginary Endings” about facing her cancer diagnosis can be viewed on YouTube.

Visit our website www.TheDoctorsArt.com where you can find transcripts of all episodes.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Henry Bear.
0:03.4	And I'm Tyler Johnson.
0:04.8	And you're listening to the Doctors' Art, a podcast that explores meaning in medicine.
0:09.9	Throughout our medical training and career, we have pondered, what makes medicine meaningful?
0:15.2	Can a stronger understanding of this meaning create better doctors?
0:18.8	How can we build healthcare institutions that nurture the doctor-patient connection?
0:23.1	What can we learn about the human condition from accompanying our patients in times of suffering?
0:28.0	In seeking answers to these questions, we meet with deep thinkers working across healthcare,
0:33.1	from doctors and nurses to patients and healthcare executives, those who have collected a career's worth of harder and wisdom.
0:40.2	Proving the moral heart that beats at the core of medicine, we will hear stories that are by turns heartbreaking,
0:45.6	amusing, inspiring, challenging, and enlightening.
0:49.3	We welcome anyone curious about why doctors do what they do.
0:52.9	Join us as we think out loud about what illness and healing can teach us about some of life's biggest questions.
1:03.7	Alright, well, we are really grateful today to be with a very special guest who,
1:10.2	unlike some of our recent guests, this is probably someone that you haven't heard of,
1:14.3	but who we consider it just as much of an honor to have him on the show as anybody else.
1:19.8	Our guest today is Andy Kleinen. He is the husband of Ellen Dunphy, whose story we profiled in detail in episode number 17.
1:32.6	And just to give the Superreaders Digest version, though I encourage everyone who's listening to this episode to go back and listen to that episode first,
1:41.8	but just to give a sort of a timeline of events so that people know the story,
1:46.6	I first met Ellen just a little bit more than two and a half years ago.
1:51.3	She was a professional actress and I had somehow gotten roped in by the hospital to doing this recording.
2:00.6	It was going to be used as like a training video to show other doctors how to have conversations surrounding difficult questions at the end of life.
	...

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