“I don’t know why I keep dropping things.  Maybe it’s my condition.” I had a hospice patient once who fascinated me with her lack of desire to know about her illness, a neurodegenerative disease that was stealing her muscle control bit by bit.  When I visited each week, she would point out new things she was noticing: the loss of muscle in her hand, her difficulty holding a coffee cup, an increasing need to clear her throat as she talked. And with each new change, she shook her head and said, “I don’t know why this is happening to me. […]