Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book is a very thoughtful look at how we are dealing with the elderly as they age and grow more infirm. The first half of the book deals with alternative (and better) options to nursing homes and discusses how nursing homes place a premium on safety and health of its residents but place little importance on their ability to have freedom and control over their lives. The author discusses how there is movement to create new living environments that give the elderly more freedom and control of their lives and improve the quality of their lives as they become more frail.
The second half of the book discusses medicine’s limitations in extending life and how, through a series of often default actions, we try to extend life at the cost of the quality of that life. The author discusses how palliative and hospice care can improve the quality of a person’s end-of-life, but that clear communication by the person, their caregivers, and their medical personnel are necessary in order to arrive at a decision that respects the person’s wishes with respect to continuing treatment for a terminal illness. (This issue is more than just having a do-not-resuscitate order in place but also deals with the question of how many different medications/chemotherapy sessions/etc. should be utilized and whether they are justified given their odds of success. In other words, how much is enough?)
The author is a surgeon and writes with clarity and an interesting personal voice. He raises important and interesting questions about how we deal with aging and death both as a society and on a personal level. It’s an extremely thought-provoking book, and I highly recommend it for everyone!