Being Mortal, The Tricky Decission Making, and What Really Matter in The End
By definition Decision
Making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision,
gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions, and yes it is
just as simple and as complicated as it may sounds. Playing a role as decision
maker is indeed a tricky position, but being one at the end of someone’s life
is a different high all together. I come across dr. Atul Gawande’s book years
after I first saw his interview on Think BIG “how doctors penetrating fears”,
and it was quite accidentally to be honest. I was so inspired by his interview
especially of how eloquent he is with words, but somehow I never look up for his
books and to my regret not even knowing he has wrote a book. Until one day I
saw his book on IG page that I followed, I instantly sold on it and purchased
the book online. Its not until sometimes ago that I finally really get to read
the book and as expected it was such a masterpiece. The book is an honest
depiction on how it really is to grow old or deal with the end of life. What
really got my attention is that this book feel so humane and humble coming from
a doctor. Being a doctor myself, I have a different perspective of seeing my
profession. When I was younger I saw doctors like an angel, now being one
somehow the way I saw my self as a doctor has somewhat shifted, we treat the
disease not the people, the goal is to cure the disease, to eradicate them if
possible, sometime at whatever cost. We came to the patient with sets of
therapy choices, from the one that has a strong evidence base and
recommendation to ones that we are not so sure about but seems quite promising
on paper.
It is a well known fact that the progression of knowledge in medical
field has come to tremendous advance, that it has profoundly altered the course
of human life. A lot of medical condition that left us wondering and struggling
in the past are now become curable or at the very least it become manageable,
it is so rapidly growing that the scientific advances have turned the natural process
of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health
care professionals. Even ‘antiaging’ (a loosely used term) has become a very popular
topic and billion dollars worth of researches were made for this solely purpose
of slowing down aging process. What we may forget is that aging and dying is
not our enemy, it is not a failure. It is a natural order of things. There is no
escaping the tragedy of life that we are all aging since the very first day we were
born. As a doctor this book has remind me that it is important to see a patient
as a complete human being, to recognise them not only by the disease that they
have, but understanding the fear, the hope, and their priority at the very end
of their lives.
“A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our
most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to
recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer;
that the chance to shape one’s story is essential to sustaining meaning in
life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture,
and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last
chapters of everyone’s lives.”-Atul Gawande on Being Mortal
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