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Pin
, August 26, 2015
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As a follow up to another book I read (The 36 Hour Day), I've been seeking to learn more ways to understand and help my mom as she ages. Sharing his personal perspectives based on his own cases, even focusing later on his father's mortal trajectory, Gawande has helped me look closer at my mom's living situation as well as her health choices and has, as a bonus, put me more in mind and control of my own future health care and living situation.
I cannot offer enough positive comments about this read and this physician-writer. Everyone will benefit from a read of this important book with its simple, self-effacing perceptions about what to think about, indeed act on, when faced with an illness or disease, especially one that may prove fatal. After all, we will all eventually face a time to die. Being able to have several conversations, prior to that time, concerning how we want to live and what we want to do about our life even as we are in the process of dying, as well as about posing questions involving treatment options in consort with doctors'/specialists' offerings is incredibly crucial. Gawande invites us to engage with his research, with his experiences with patients, and his ensuing conclusions in a most readable way that leaves the reader feeling empowered by his clarity. The reader is offered a gift of knowledge to understand, decide, and deliver communication to loved ones about choices as we each live and die. Gawande's empathic and informative efforts to suggest alternative ways to think about living in dying would have made his father even more proud than he most likely was.
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