"Learning How to Die with 'Being Mortal'"

This book focuses on one question: How to die.

Though many are in denial of their aging or feel hard to accept the finitude of human life, death is all humans inevitable fate. Thanks to the advances of modern medicine, the overall life expectancy of humans is significantly prolonged. Its common to believe doctors job is to ensure health and survival. But the author, a surgeon himself, believes doctors responsibility is far larger than that. Doctors should be responsible for peoples well-being by treating them not merely as patients but as humans.

According to Maslows hierarchy of needs, besides the most basic physiological needs, people want to live for something greater, larger, something above themselves. At an old age, what is the most important for a life worth living? For a nursing home, the answer might be safety and health. That might explain the three plagues in most nursing homes: boredom, loneliness, and helplessness. The residents in the nursing homes are all living an institutional life, and its hard for them to find meaning in their life. The question is: should health and safety be the means instead of the ends?

For the terminally ill, many of them are finally reduced to ICU with ventilators or tubes assisting with their living. But is that what they really want? Have they and their families discussed how they would like to die? Would they prefer to die in the hospital ICU unit or at home? Maybe it takes more courage to accept our finitude and give up at the right time.