Strong stuff. Read it only when ready. In his newest and best book, the surgeon Atul Gawande lets us have it right between the eyes: no matter how careful we are or healthful our habits, like everyone else, we will die, and probably after a long period of decline and debility. The average American, he tells us, spends a year or more disabled and living in a nursing home. Furthermore, the medical system will be of very little help at the end. In Gawande’s words: The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. Gawande wants us to know that the tragedy of old age and death cannot be fixed by modern medicine, so we better find some other way to deal with it. He divides his book into eight beautifully written chapters that follow the trajectory from independence to death. Being Mortal, the most personal book he has written, ends with the long dying of his own father.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 13:20:07 +0000
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