“We imagine that we
can wait until the doctors tell us that there is nothing more they can do.
But
rarely is there nothing more that doctors can do… there’s always something.”
Dr. Atul Gawande (b.
1965)
American surgeon,
author
Dr. Gawande
continues the thought, observing that more “treatment” often is incompatible
with a terminally ill patient’s personal desires and expectations about how to
spend the remaining time in ways that are most satisfying, for the patient and
for loved ones.(1)
This is his message:
more treatment doesn’t necessarily make life better or longer.
Read his book.
If you can, read it
before you get to your own end time.
Then talk about it,
with your doctor, your friends and your family.
(1) Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in
the End (New York: Metropolitan Books, Henry Holt and Company, 2014), 173-74.
Copyright © Richard
Carl Subber 2015
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