Michael Perkins's Reviews > Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

WOW!

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/28/op...

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This book was released just about the time my mother-in-law was diagnosed with the worst kind of brain cancer, Glioblastoma. The entire family read this book at the same time. She had surgery, but they only got about 80% of the tumor and saw that the tendrils of what remained were deeply entwined in the brain.

But something happened that highlighted a doctor behavior that this author discourages, false hope. On my own, I consulted a brain cancer specialist. She gave my mother in law about 4 months.

But a top oncologist in Portland, OR, blathered about experimental treatments and something about three years to live. To me, such false hope is cowardly. Of course, desperate people hear what they want to hear. In this case, my father in law. My mother in law died 3.5 months after surgery. My father in law was devastated.

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Meanwhile, an uplifting story from the book printed at the time in the NYT...

https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/op...