When Patients Mentor Doctors

It was a cold December morning in 2015, and Roger was slowly dying. With end-stage chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Roger had been in and out of the hospital for months, each episode worse than the last. Once a functional New Yorker who walked to his favorite corner store with an oxygen tank, Roger had morphed into a gaunt skeleton, tethered to his bed by entangling tubes and masks. Time was precious as death closed in, and Roger was wasting it in a lonely, restrictive hospital room.