Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

Author: Atul Gawande
Rating: 5 Stars
Review By: Shana

​Profound and profoundly important.  This is a book I think everyone should read. And then should read again as the people they care about age and start to have increasing needs.  Being Mortal is grounding and eye-opening and heart-breaking and breathtaking.

In talking about mortality and what awaits us, it stresses that there is a difference between what medicine often offers (an all out battle with illness, an attempt to "fix" things, an assault at all costs rather than dignified surrender) and what we might need toward the end when a fight is not winnable and the very fighting might end up shortening the time you have left, or perhaps worse, making that time unbearable. 

Gawande also highlights something we often don't think about, what makes those final days and months and years enjoyable and worth living.  If we are lucky, most of us will make it to old age and this book made me think about what I'll want then, and how I can be the best steward possible for my parents (and be an advocate for what they actually want in their lives) when time grows shorter.  This is an important book that should be required reading for all.