Death Interrupted Quotes

“False hope drives us to push on in the face of dismal odds. It means that we set aside one of the most important tools in medicine, palliative care, until, I would argue, the window for effective palliative measures has mostly closed and it is too late to undo extraordinary suffering.”
― Blair Bigham, Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die

“As the lungs fail, the acid carbon dioxide accumulates in the body because it can’t escape through exhaling lungs. The kidneys, in response to the acidification of the blood, retain bicarbonate, a base, in an effort to equal out the body’s pH.”
― Blair Bigham, Death Interrupted: How Modern Medicine Is Complicating the Way We Die