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

Depressing, but necessary to consider and talk about. What's the one unfortunate thing everyone on this planet has in common right now? We will all eventually die one day. So knowing that eventuality, why do we not plan for and discuss how we want to spend our final years/months/weeks/days? If we are fortunate enough to go the way of a steady decline via old age, how can we maintain our enjoyment of life as we become less able to meet our own needs independently without burdening our loved ones? If faced with a terminal prognosis, how do you weigh interventions that can possibly extend quantity of life versus those that can extend quality of life? These questions and more are covered in this book, with sobering real life examples, some of which come from the author's own family. I found this book to be informative and hopefully useful at some point in the very distant future. A must read for everyone, though perhaps delay doing so if there has been a recent death in your life, as this would probably be harder to read emotionally.