Name: Being Mortal
Rating: 4.549723756906078 (181 reviews)
ISBN: 9780805095159

Atul Gawande

A prominent surgeon argues against modern medical practices that extend life at the expense of quality of life while isolating the dying, outlining suggestions for freer, more fulfilling approaches to death that enable more dignified and comfortable choices.

Medicine and What Matters in the End

Being Mortal

Syrina

The way we saw it, and the way our Professors saw it, the purpose of medical schooling was to teach how to save lives, not how to tend to their demise.

Daniel Bower

You live longer only when you stop trying to live longer.

Julia <3

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. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers. 

Annalee Walton

Everyone should read this book. Everyone. 

Robert Petkoff

Honestly did not expect to enjoy this book. I thought that it would have been dry but it was so insightful with a tinge of philosophy and reflections.

Natasha Mok

Pratik M

I started reading Being Mortal nearly a year ago and somehow never got around to finishing it. It’s admittedly a difficult read in the sense that it can be overwhelming at times. I finally finished it last night. 

The premise focuses on the quality of life rather than the length of life and more specifically, the manner in which you choose to pass away. Medical science has advanced to such a degree that humans can be kept alive for a much longer time than you would imagine. But no one has stopped to ask the question of whether we should. Or as in Amitabh’s immortal (no pun intended) words, yeh jeena bhi koi jeena hai. Gawande cites several examples from his professional and personal life that focuses on the individual’s choice on care and ultimately, way to die. The Republicans’ favorite chant ‘death panels’ actually referred to the end of life counseling that doctors offered their patients. It’s the ultimate decision you can take for your life.

You do not choose to be born in this world and as of today, most laws even prevent you from actively choosing to die but at least you can choose the way you die when and only when you’re diagnosed to. The DNR is the most commonly known legal process in our pop culture and medical professionals are taught to honor it just as they’re taught to honor the first do no harm principle. Others like hospice care are fraught with emotions that you may not be fighting back hard enough. But after a while, it’s useless fighting nature.

Being Mortal will not only make you aware of your mortality but actually prepare you for it. I say that in the most humble and optimistic way. You aren’t immortal. You’re going to die. You’re born in perhaps one or two ways but you can die in umpteen different and uncharacteristic ways. The worst I believe, waiting to die which can be a long and painful process not only for the person but also for their loved ones. Modern medicine can perhaps keep you alive for as long as it is possible today but it’s entirely within your rights and choice to decide when enough is enough.

Timeo Williams

Excellent book and especially relevant to my personal situation, as I have the opportunity to live close by my grandparents. I've seen them age and they've done quite well, luckily. But my situation is unique compared to the majority of grandparents living in assisted living centers and nursing homes. 

Gawande writes about these developments, his background and cultural upbringing and the pros and cons of family caring for the elderly to elders living in very "safe"/privatized environments. 

This book had gotten me to start thinking about retirement and old age in a different light and also has me pondering how I should die - in an engineering perspective. What are the trade-offs by which I consider acceptable? If I can no longer read, understand what's going on around me, help others - is it worth going through additional rounds of chemotherapy to never return to those activities? Definitely topics to consider.

so refreshing and has a journalistic feel to it- from personal experiences to interviews to articles. really love gawande’s people-first approach and it’s a must read for anyone in healthcare

vania

Aamna

Okay we all really need to figure our shit out especially how to make sure that we don't fall EVER.

Rohit Arondekar

People die only once. They have no experience to draw on. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and escape a warehouse oblivion that few really want.

Being Mortal is a call to humanise the brutally capitalistic medical industry that has perfected the art of rationalised cruelty and lost sight of the patients well being. Beautifully written, thought-provoking, well researched and drawing on personal experiences of the author—this is a must-read book.

Obada Mu

"Old age is a continuous series of losses." Atul Gawande

Really insightful and - for me - actionable. Recommended for all who has old relatives, or isn't young themselves, or whose who encountered with serious illness. 

Oksana Rudenko

Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Nursing homes, preoccupied with safety, pin patients into railed beds and wheelchairs. Hospitals isolate the dying, checking for vital signs long after the goals of cure have become moot. Doctors, committed to extending life, continue to carry out devastating procedures that in the end extend suffering. 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.

Medicine and what Matters in the End

Pratul

I can't think of anyone who shouldn't read this book. 

A difficult read, yes, but what an incredible account of life through death. It raises many pertinent questions and offers some (valuable) responses to them, and left me with a lot of thinking material.

Jeet Jhaveri

While we live, we should think about death, particularly how we want to die and how we should be treated if suffered with near death medical fatalities.
The second thing this book talks about his how the medical community and society in general needs to view the objective of treatment being not just to cure but to cure/treat/repair keeping in mind the well-being of the opposite human being and not just an extension of survival of life that's not "full of life".

Kat A

Losing my independence and mobility in old age, and having to live out the rest of my days in a depressing and underfunded care facility, is one of my biggest fears. 

This books tackles the questions we need to ask ourselves and our loved ones before that stage of life comes. The more honest and specific you can be, the better. 

This book discusses questions like:

How much intervention is too much, and when is it doing more harm than good? 

Why does our society still see death as a medical issue and not an issue of well being? 

Fascinating read. 10/10 stars.

Diana Platgalve

** spoiler alert **
           Very interesting read on how people reach the final stages of their life and the role of medical personal and assistance in it. The book is divided in two parts: one focusing on dying of old age, other- dying of terminal illness with no cure. 
For the first part I enjoyed the references made to various studies and organisations that focused on elderly care. When you get old, it is a constant battle of losing. You lose your loved ones, your friends, your hobbies, your own abilities. From reading the text, you feel how devastating from psychological perspective it can be when you lose your own independence, and how hard medical personal sometimes have to work, to ease the devastation and provide a new meaning for elderly. 
Second part includes hard conversations when someone faces something incurable and a little discussion on assisted death. Again I enjoyed many perspectives on hard conversations. The ones he had as a doctor himself, and the ones he had as a family member of someone who dealt with terminal illness. 
It is an emotional read, as you can follow so many people facing their last days and the passing of the authors father. This book provides so much information and perspectives, that I recommend to read for everyone. Because we all have to deal with being mortal.

Michelle Xu

I try to make a point of writing a review immediately or a few days after I finish reading a book so that it’s still fresh on my mind when I do write. But I got lazy and totally forgot to write one… So here is a delayed and not as comprehensive review:

I started this book about 2 months ago during finals week. I had to force myself to put it down so I could study. Finally, I finished the whole book on a long airplane ride followed by a subsequent car ride. That whole time I tried to hide my face from people because I didn't want them seeing me cry...

I rarely rarely rarely read nonfiction. I can’t even remember the last time I ever read a nonfiction book that wasn’t forced upon me by an English class. I always assumed nonfiction meant boring and uncreative or lacking in elegant writing. Boy was I wrong. This book has definitely inspired me to look more into nonfiction in the future.

No matter what, I strongly urge anyone and everyone to read this book. While the book is US-centric, I do think anyone can relate and sympathize with the ordeals of aging and end-of-life care.

So full disclosure: I’m a Health Care Management and Policy major. So this type of book is exactly the type of nonfiction book I would actually read. Everything mentioned in this book made me nod and think about what I’ve learned in class. I already knew that the American health system and mindset was a little fucked up. I knew most of the statistics Gawande mentioned in his book. But what surprised me most was the emotion behind this book. All the hundreds of interviews conducted and written down on paper by Gawande perfectly pulled the themes and issues together.

I would split the book into two parts. The first half is about aging and elderly care. It is filled with stories about people who don’t really have a specific illness, but rather a cocktail of chronic diseases like diabetes, hypertension, a history of heart attacks, hip fractures, weak knees, memory loss, etc. We walked through the lives of multiple families and their often-unhappy endings. Along they way, we learn of the strides taken in nursing home and assisted living reform. While Gawande ends this first topic on a fairly optimistic note if care reform, the whole shrinking area of the geriatric field is worrisome and the lax regulations on nursing homes make me worried about what would happen when my grandparents got too old to live on their own.

The second half is about terminal illnesses and end-of-life care. Again, this latter half is filled with more stories and anecdotes from people Gawande had interviewed. What set this apart from the first half, was the fact that it was so much more personal. Gawande weaves in the heartbreaking story of his own father’s battle with spinal cancer and the downward spiral that resulted from the disease. There are many more heart wrenching anecdotes within the second half, but I think the pain, confusion, and distress from Gawande’s personal story shone through.

One aspect that I thoroughly appreciated was Gawande’s admittance of his own shortcomings as a doctor and his struggle with defining and adjusting what a doctor’s role is in society. It’s no longer to fix but to promote the patient’s highest well-being—and that doesn’t always mean fight a terminal disease to the end. He also admits to struggling with talking to patients about end-of-life care. You never want to tell someone that they’re dying. You want to be the bringer of hope and possibilities… not death. But then there’s a good way and bad way to talk about death. Gawande’s struggle and then practice with talking about end-of-life care was definitely one of my favorite parts. The book does a good job humanizing doctors. You get to see that there are some doctors who really do what they do because of their dedication to patients, then there are others who are either too uncomfortable, too busy, or too haughty to deal with the emotional side of patient care. (My hope is that those doctors will snap out of it and work along with health administrators towards patient-centered care).

By the end of this book, I don’t think I have any negative things to say about it. JUST READ IT!

Julie Berman

Brian Alderman

Wow. Besides being beautifully written, the data this book explains and the case it lays out for our healthcare system is compelling and necessary!

Lucas Coelho

“All we ask is to be allowed to remain the writers of our own story. That story is ever changing. Over the course of our lives, we may encounter unimaginable difficulties. Our concerns and desires may shift. But whatever happens, we want to retain the freedom to shape our lives in ways consistent with our character and loyalties.” 

“Courage is strength in the face of knowledge of what is to be feared or hoped. Wisdom is prudent strength.”

Being Mortal Medicine and What Matters in the End

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