Being Mortal

Medicine and What Matters in the End

By: Atul Gawande

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

Number one New York Times best seller

In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending 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.

Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life - all the way to the very end.

©2014 Atul Gawande (P)2014 Macmillan Audio

You must read this book

Because you - like me - are going to die one day. Because maybe you - and maybe I too - will become one day old and frail.
Because maybe you too - like me - have an old parent to care for. Maybe you too - like me - have lost a parent to a terminal illness.
And we have a lot of doubts, and hopes, and fears. This author helps us a bit, with his compassionate interest for unpleasant and important questions that concern us all.
Don't miss this book, it's important.

Should be Required Reading for Anyone over 40!

Truly a life-changing book for me. It changed the way I look at death and dying--particularly through the eyes of a medical professional. Atule's observations about what those in healthcare are inclined to do to help the dying, what they should be doing, and the importance of determining with the patients what their needs and wants really are--what a revelation about how wrong they often are in spite of their best intentions! I've asked my wife and all our children to please read this book to help them understand end-of-life and, moreover, to help them help me when I reach that point!

Everyone should read. Everyone!

Halfway through and I had already recommended this book to several people who also read or are reading it. Hard to believe a book on death and dying could be a page-turner. But it’s really all about living. And that’s what makes it a masterpiece. This book is one of the best, if not the best, Audible book in my library of hundreds of listens.

I wish everyone had access to painless dying and medical professionals like Dr. Gawande. What a wonderful human being dealing with the very important subject of being human.

Quality in life and death

Such great information shared on assessment of choices in life and at the end of life. Information essential for myself and the choices I make as well as understanding the choices that others make for themselves. Thank you writing this book.

Eye-opening

A beautifully poignant book on what matters most at the end of our lives. I think people at all stages in life would benefit from reading this book.

Paradigm changing book!

Robert Petkoff did a phenomenal job of narrating this book. The literature was a perfect mix of historical, clinical and personal anecdotes delivered in a way that went straight into my heart. The plight of the aging and chronically ill population is a growing, expanding condition that every one of us will get to face both personally, and within our circle of family and friends. Everybody dies. Some of us die a piece at a time. A few of us get taken out of this life with one whack, but for most of us, it is a gradual dying. So the big question is how shall we make LIVING WHILE DYING the very best it can be? This book attempts to paint a picture of possibilities. It is hope-filled. Things can be better than they have been if we can honor each other’s humanity to the very end. I loved it!

Thought Provoking and Eye Opening

An amazing experience for a first time user of Audible & incredible first book. AWESOME

A must for every health care worker, and everyone else!

All health care professionals, mainly medical students and doctors need to read this book a few times at different stages of their learning/training/practicing.
And for all of us, it explains an important period of our lives which is often overlooked and avoided.

Everyone Alive Who Will Die Should Read !

Fabulous Book on the realities of dying and late life medical and physical care from very personal experiences. Learned more about where I don't want to end up as I grow older, than any other information. Illuminating about what makes for a quality last quarter of life!

Critical Book for all Health and Spiritual Care

I recommend this book for all health and spiritual care. It touches on what we really need to consider when end of life decisions are involved. It is what must be faced beyond medicine.