What Really Matters at the End of Life

Title: Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters In the End
Author: Atul Gawande
Host: Joanne

As a bit of scene-setting, here is how the publisher describes this important work: "In Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life, but also the process of its ending.

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."

Insights and Opinions

Notes contributed by Steve:
+ I especially enjoyed how our discussion went beyond insights gleaned from Gawande's Being Mortal to how we ourselves define what would make life worth living as we approach the end. Some of the many questions we discussed were how hard we would fight a fatal illness, what types of medical intervention we would endure and what factors would influence our decisions.

+ From there, we asked ourselves what three things we would need to prolong our lives, and we found our discussion so interesting we decided to suggest that everyone give some thought to the question and come with an answer to our January 19 meeting.

+ For me, I don't really know at this point in my life. But I think the three things would be a functioning mind (the ability to think and recall memories), a functioning body (the ability to breathe and eat without tubes), and …I'm not sure about the third one. Maybe the ability to feel and express love. To lose my ability to walk and to read would be very difficult for me, but I don't think so devastating that I would decide life was not worth living. I do know that, if faced with an incurable and painful illness, I would want to choose how and when my life would end and I believe it is my right to make that decision.

+ I realize these are heavy thoughts but we agreed with Gawande's admonition to make plans now for a likely and possibly extended period of frailty and to communicate those plans to family and friends.

Other Stuff

+ For our January book, we talked about wanting to read something light and humorous. And then we decided on Richard Ford's Let Me Be Frank with You. We'll see if that fills the bill.