Being Mortal summary

Modern medicine allows us to now live longer than ever before. In past centuries, diseases contracted after the age of 50 usually resulted in a quick death. Today, however, doctors can help us maintain our health much longer, slowing the body’s deterioration and postponing death.

As a result of these medical breakthroughs, the percentage of Americans over the age of 65 has risen from 2 to 14 percent in the last 200 years. In Germany, Italy and Japan the elderly now constitute 20 percent of the population. While it might seem strange, these demographic changes have meant changes in how we die.

When you’re young, you have all the freedom you could ask for. You can live by yourself and play by your own rules, without anyone meddling in your affairs.

While independence is among our fundamental values, the truth is that a point will come in life when complete independence is no longer tenable. When you grow old or sick, you must accept the new limitations imposed by your body and mind. But that doesn’t mean you want to give up the values that have guided your entire life.

When most people think of old age homes, they imagine drab rooms full of dullness and depression – and this stereotype isn’t too far from the mark. Unfortunately, boredom and loneliness are the norm for the elderly.

Nursing homes and intensive care units often operate on regimented routines that infringe on people’s autonomy. People who had previously lived their lives in relative freedom suddenly find themselves bound to a schedule and forced to give up all personal privacy.

Twenty-five percent of the US’s healthcare costs is for treatment of people who are in the final year of their life, even though they make up only five percent of all patients. While some of these treatments are important and beneficial, many are hopeless attempts to prolong a fading life. Drawing out death often does more harm than good.

In choosing a treatment, both patients and doctors often succumb to hopeful delusions. Even when all the odds are against them, the patient and their family tend to anxiously await a miracle cure that almost certainly won’t come.

Clearly, modern society’s version of medical care fails to meet the needs and desires of those facing death. To age well and to die well, we need to promote services that respect people’s autonomy while providing compassionate help and guidance when it is needed.

One such model that does this is assisted living, which aims to move away from the rigorous control of nursing homes while essentially providing the same services.

The relationship between doctor and patient is often tricky, and this is especially true when the patient is terminally ill. Doctors are no less human than their patients, and are constantly torn between professional sobriety and natural compassion.

But in order to help sick people make the most of their lives, doctors can’t be completely one way or the other.

We often don’t want to talk or think about old age and mortality – neither our own or that of our loved ones. Often, we start thinking about death and illness when it’s already too late, thus forcing ourselves to make hasty decisions and depriving ourselves of a dignified good-bye.

It’s important that you discuss the questions that come with age and disease openly with family and our friends, for example, by considering what “trade-offs” you’re willing to make on your sick- or deathbed. You can make this vivid by considering the following questions: What will be most important in your final hours? What makes life worth living?