Dr. Frank N Laughlin, MD

My sister and I met Dr. Laughlin on a Thursday afternoon at the care partners so Lois center in Asheville. My sister had just been admitted to residential hospice care suffering is the ravages of stage for breast cancer. Dr. Laughlin – – who asks people to call him either Dr. Frank or just Frank – – sat with us for about an hour and reviewed Lynda‘s clinical history while sympathetically annotating his own notes with her comments and corrections. Frank then lead us through what the dying process entails. Besides giving us the clinical roadmap, he also let us understand that for many people dying becomes a time of inward journeying both in terms of abrupt changes in the body’s physiology but also in terms of a spiritual awakening often inflected by beautiful memories of the lived past. Frank was at the same time emotionally available and clinically precise, something that I have very rarely noted physicians to be capable of. We came into the meeting full of trepidation and… confused uncertainty. We left greatly reassured, beautifully informed, and much better prepared to deal with the next inevitably trying days in hospice. I remain, after reflecting on this experience, astonished that such a beautiful result could take place in such a fraught setting.