Letting Go
What should medicine do when it can’t save your life?
Modern medicine is good at staving off death with aggressive interventions—and bad at knowing when to focus, instead, on improving the days that terminal patients have left...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. ... Full Story »
Posted by Kaizar Campwala - via New Yorker, Publish2 (Health), miker1717 (t), barbara trummpinski-roberts (t), Mark Pegrum (t), Joey Baker (t), Gil Sharon (t), Fabrice Florin (f), David Fox (f), Tiffany Hebb (f), Kaizar Campwala (f), Shams Kazi (f), Gian Antelles (f), Jeremy Caplan (f), Phylora Uppman (f), David K. Miller (f), Jon Mitchell (f), avivao (f), Joe Bonner (f), Subramanya Sastry (f)
I happened to be an Oncologist. I work hard to measure up to my Patient's expectation and feel great when science and compassionate, humane care go hand in hand. For example curing a young man with Testicular cancer or a young woman with Hodhkin lymphoma. Even prolonging meaningful life makes it all worthwhile.What becomes painful is having to go on with futility when patient expectations are way beyond natural history of diseases or for that matter human experience. Worst is when economy or (somewhat) peudoscience widely disseminated by electronic or print media make isuch fultilities into "Human right" or even worst "Birth right". Hospice and its ancillary missionaries are extremely valuable and society and professionals need to take a lead in educating our "Terminally Ill" patients and their families. Excellent article as usual by dr.Gawande.