Being Mortal
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post, The New York Times Book Review, NPR, and Chicago Tribune, now in paperback with a new reading group guide
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients' anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them.
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Here he examines its ultimate limitations and failures—in his own practices as well as others'—as life draws to a close. Riveting, honest, and humane, 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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Community Reviews
"The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don't want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don't want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can't. Someone who understand that the damage is greatest if all you do is battle to the bitter end.
More often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, 'You let me know when you want to stop.' All-out treatment, we tell the incurably ill, is a train you can get off at any time - just say when. But for most patients and their families we are asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. Our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come and escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want."
1. What are your biggest fears and concerns?
2. What goals are most important to you?
3. What trade-offs are you willing to make, and what ones are you not?
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Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
263 pages
What’s it about?
This book explores, from a physician’s viewpoint, how the medical field is influencing the way our lives end- in illness and in old age.
What did it make me think about?
I cannot overstate how important I thought this book was. It was such a fascinating look at the way we make decisions for the elderly and the very ill. Dr. Atul Gawande steers us through this difficult terrain with wisdom and grace.
Should I read it?
I think this book was a must read for anyone who is dealing with aging or death. Basically, that means everyone… I felt like this book radically changed my perspective. It changed how I will frame the discussions I have with my family. How often does a book do that?
Quote-
“The problem with medicine and the institutions it has spawned for the care of the sick and the old is not that they have had an incorrect view of what makes life significant. The problem is that they have had almost no view at all. Medicine’s focus is narrow. Medical professionals concentrate on repair of health, not sustenance of the soul. Yet- and this is the painful paradox- we have decided that they should be the ones who largely define how we live in our waning days. For more than a half a century now, we have treated the trials of sickness, aging, and mortality as medical concerns. It’s been an experiment in social engineering, putting our fates in the hands of people valued more for their technical prowess than for their understanding of human needs.
That experiment has failed. If safety and protection were all we sought in life, perhaps we could conclude differently. But because we seek a life of worth and purpose, and yet are routinely denied the conditions that might make it possible, there is no other way to see what modern society has done.”
Question-
Did you feel like this book changed your viewpoint?
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