Book Review: Being Mortal

Atul Gawande, a Boston based surgeon and a professor at Harvard has been writing at Slate Magazine and later New Yorker since the 1990s.  He received national acclaim when he published a New Yorker article titled The Cost Conundrum.

He is also the author of three best-selling books:

Complications: where he explores the power and the limits of medicine.

Better:  examines accounts of medical failure and success.

The Checklist Manifesto: he writes that the volume and complexity of knowledge today has exceeded our ability as individuals to properly deliver it to people—and that we can do better, using the simplest of methods: the checklist.

Although I have not read the above three books mentioned, I have occasionally read his articles.  I did read and just finished his latest book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End.

The book is a tour de force and I hope that it will resonate with many as it did with me.  I am always relieved when I experience good writing - and Gawande possesses a good pen!

This book, Being Mortal, is a seamless integration of sociology, science, philosophy and management theory with each section of the book dripping with insightful anecdotes and telling statistics.

I was getting a little rattled reading chapter 2, 'Falling Apart' where he describes how each part of our body - eyes, teeth, brain, heart etc age and what happens to them as they age.  So I did what a good rattled person would do.  First I shared some 'insights' with my wife.  And when she was also sufficiently rattled, I called my brother who proceeded to laugh darkly with me (we always enjoyed ghoulish tales as kids).

Gawande traces cultural roots in terms of how we think of age and aging and how it intersects with our notion of independence.  He provides a clear and compelling history of nursing homes and the abuse and misuse of regulations and legislation to create facilities that trapped the elderly in unsafe situations in the early days.

Laura Carstensen is one of the most famous researchers on the topic of Aging.  She wrote a recent cover story for TIME magazine on aging.  I am quite delighted that we partner with her and her team at Stanford Center on Longevity for our work in my organization.  I was touched reading Laura's story in the Assisted Living chapter.  Even though I have heard her speak a few times, Gawande's section put it in full context; plus Laura's motivation to pursue this field was moving and powerful.

Throughout the book, Gawande narrates his relationship with his father, a Physician himself, from early interactions through to ultimately passing on.  His very last anecdote where he visits the Ganges to perform ceremonial rights for his father (and his western-urban reaction upon being there) exactly mirrors my experience from 2006, when I went to the river Krishna in the south of India, to do the same for my mother.

At that time I had shared my experience with my family and friends in an essay titled The Parting, which could just as well be a substitute for Gawande's final and personal anecdote.

The Parting: http://agingonthevine.blogspot.com/2006/01/parting.html

Gawande's book is an an edge of the seat read in a most unexpected way.  It helps us understand our own mortality in a compelling way by putting it in a cultural context, a human context, a biological context and most importantly a personal context.

I highly recommend reading Being Mortal. Although it is a sobering subject, it is written with flair, and with telling anecdote.  It is a necessary rumination that we all need to absorb as we try and find fulfillment in our respective life journeys.