From surgeon and bestselling author Atul Gawande, the book that is changing medicine – and lives
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 patents’
anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are
actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along with
all of it.
In his bestselling books, Atul
Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his
profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures – in his own
practices as well as others’ – as life draws to a close. And he discovers how
we can do better. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds, a geriatrician in
his clinic, and reformers turning nursing homes upside down. He finds people
who show us how to have the hard conversations and how to ensure we never
sacrifice what people really care about.
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.