At a dinner with three girlfriends the topic of aging parents came up. Two of the women had read Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande and they both highly recommended it as a must read for all of us. Gawande tackles the tough topics of hospice, extending life, quality of life, and dying. One of my girlfriends purchased copies for her parents and they read it together to cultivate open and honest conversations about what each of them would want given different, and difficult, situations. I'm anxious to read it and hear what each of you think about it as well.
Below is the book's full description:
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering.
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession's ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person's last weeks or months may be rich and dignified.
Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life - all the way to the very end.
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