![]() If that sounds vague, Gawande has plenty of engaging and nuanced stories to leave the reader with a good sense of what he means. Rather than ensuring health and survival, it is “to enable well-being.” Gawande writes that members of the medical profession, himself included, have been wrong about what their job is. It is also a call for a change in the philosophy of health care. ![]() His new book, “Being Mortal,” is a personal meditation on how we can better live with age-related frailty, serious illness and approaching death. The surgeon in the story is the father of Atul Gawande, who is also a surgeon as well as a writer for The New Yorker. Should he have it removed right away in a risky operation, as his doctor recommended? Or should he take time to consider this question: At what point would the expanding tumor cause debility bad enough to justify the risk of greater debility or even death in trying to fight it? That was when the difficult choices began. ![]() A couple of years later, he learned he had a tumor inside his spinal cord. ![]() It began with a tingle in the surgeon’s fingers and a pain in his neck. ![]()
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