Medicine has always been something of a difficult mess with all those many parts doing so many different things. And then practitioners adding their actions.

 Out of all of them only one is they are dying which affects people generally, from the highest echelon doctors to the lowliest patients.  Doctors are trained in how to keep patients alive and with all the new technology, they can certainly do that for periods during which time more and more surgeries and procedures and medicines are used hoping to make a big difference – but they’ll really make only a 10% difference.  At a given minimum, the bottom line purpose for hospitals is to keep patients alive. 

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Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End
by Atul Gawande
2014 / 282 pages
read by Robert Patoff  9h 3m
rating:  9 / nonfiction (health – medicine)
(read and listened)

Dr Gawande is a medical doctor interested in how people die and what, in the final days, is most important to them.  

I read this book back in 2015 I believe.  The group has chosen to read it again – some folks weren’t with us then and others could simply use a refresher.  I’m in the latter category –  now I’m wanting to reread it as a little kind of guide to how I should grow older.  

When this book first appeared my mom was 91 years old and as independent as she had ever been. She’d moved from her old home in the Sierra Nevadas to a senior park in a nearby small town where she knew many people and had activities.  The truth is that my siblings and I had moved her; we’d insisted she sell the house and move closer to town for driving and health. I think she was being unreasonable.  But she drove into town almost every day for card games or church or shopping. Her car was older.  

I thought I was doing okay as a caregiver but she had NOT wanted to move to town.  I’m not proud of how I helped her and my family, but I’m certainly not ashamed in any way. There’s a good sense of peace.