“Don’t you give up on me,” he said. “You give me every chance I’ve got.” Outside the room, after he signed the form, the son took me aside. His mother had died on a ventilator in intensive care, and at the time his father had said he did not want anything like that to happen to him. But now he was adamant about doing “everything.” I believed then that Mr. Lazaroff had chosen badly, and I still believe this. He chose badly not because of all the dangers but because the operation didn’t stand a chance of giving him what he really wanted: his continence, his strength, the life he had previously
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