« The world's most elusive honey brand. | Home | Human landscaping. »
August 1, 2010
On making the most of life.
"Letting Go", Atul Gawande's latest essay for The New Yorker, is a powerful and eloquent summary of a topic that is still taboo in most public conversation: when is it time to stop fighting your oncoming death, and time to make the best of your remaining life?
Spending one’s final days in an I.C.U. because of terminal illness is for most people a kind of failure. You lie on a ventilator, your every organ shutting down, your mind teetering on delirium and permanently beyond realizing that you will never leave this borrowed, fluorescent place. The end comes with no chance for you to have said goodbye or “It’s O.K.” or “I’m sorry” or “I love you.”People have concerns besides simply prolonging their lives. Surveys of patients with terminal illness find that their top priorities include, in addition to avoiding suffering, being with family, having the touch of others, being mentally aware, and not becoming a burden to others. Our system of technological medical care has utterly failed to meet these needs, and the cost of this failure is measured in far more than dollars. The hard question we face, then, is not how we can afford this system’s expense. It is how we can build a health-care system that will actually help dying patients achieve what’s most important to them at the end of their lives.
"Letting Go" (Atul Gawande, The New Yorker")
This article made the list that Kevin Kelly recently compiled of The Best Magazine Articles Ever.
The follow-up discussion between Gawande and readers is here.
My Dad's take on this was a big part of the conversation we had the week before he died.
