Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

by Atul Gawande

asked her what her goals were, and she didn’t have any she could see possible. When I asked what her fears for the future were, she named a litany: facing more pain, suffering the humiliation of losing more of her bodily control, being unable to leave the hospital. She choked up as she spoke. She’d been there for days just getting worse, and she feared she didn’t have many more. I asked her if they’d talked to her about hospice. They had, she said, but she didn’t see what it could do to help her. Some in her position, offered “death with dignity,” might have taken it as the only chance for control when no other options seemed apparent. Martin and I persuaded Peg to try hospice. It’d at least let her get home, I said, and might help her more than she knew. I explained how hospice’s aim, at least in theory, was to give people their best possible day, however they might define it under the circumstances. It seemed like it had been a while since she’d had a good day, I said.