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How Doctors Die→

Ken Murray writing for Zócalo Public Square on how doctors die:

Years ago, Charlie, a highly respected orthopedist and a mentor of mine, found a lump in his stomach. He had a surgeon explore the area, and the diagnosis was pancreatic cancer. This surgeon was one of the best in the country. He had even invented a new procedure for this exact cancer that could triple a patient’s five-year-survival odds—from 5 percent to 15 percent—albeit with a poor quality of life. Charlie was uninterested. He went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again. He focused on spending time with family and feeling as good as possible. Several months later, he died at home. He got no chemotherapy, radiation, or surgical treatment. Medicare didn’t spend much on him.

It’s not a frequent topic of discussion, but doctors die, too. And they don’t die like the rest of us. What’s unusual about them is not how much treatment they get compared to most Americans, but how little. For all the time they spend fending off the deaths of others, they tend to be fairly serene when faced with death themselves. They know exactly what is going to happen, they know the choices, and they generally have access to any sort of medical care they could want. But they go gently.

Over the past year or so, I’ve been reading a lot of articles (at least by my standards) dealing with end-of-life situations, and I’ve found them all to be pretty fascinating (though also slightly depressing). I’d recommend reading the entire article — it’s rather short and to the point. Another really good article that I read was simply titled Letting Go. I also really liked this article in The Atlantic on the triumph of new-age medicine.

Death — especially our own — is clearly a topic that nobody likes to think about, but if there’s been one consistent message in the articles I’ve read, it’s been this:

But doctors still don’t over-treat themselves. They see the consequences of this constantly. Almost anyone can find a way to die in peace at home, and pain can be managed better than ever. Hospice care, which focuses on providing terminally ill patients with comfort and dignity rather than on futile cures, provides most people with much better final days.

[Zócalo via kottke.org]