Yesterday I started reading Atul Gawande‘s book Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science. It is good and I briefly considered taking it with me to Virginia to read while I am caring for my Dad. The cover photograph is a bit disturbing to flash around in a hospital waiting room though. I decided to take something more soothing and distracting, so Dicken’s An Uncommercial Traveler is accompanying me instead. His chapter “Nurse’s Stories” has given me the idea to tell my father ghost stories when he’s in the hospital.
I have read all of Gawande’s recent New Yorker essay: “Letting go: what medicine should do when it can’t save your life” (available at Gawande’s website: http//gawande.com). His main point in this article is that US doctors–and US patients— just aren’t very good at “knowing when to stop” expensive treatments even when the benefits aren’t clear. What interested me the most was his reference to a study of Medicare patients with heart failure who I assume were randomized to either conventional or hospice care. The patents in hospice care lived on average 3 months longer than the conventional care patients (and I also assume with better quality of life). That study finding may come in handy this next week in discussions with my Dad and with his doctors. Gawande discusses how the tough ‘breakpoint discussions” (when to stop fighting for time/life) between patients and doctors aren’t done very often because the discussions take time and aren’t reimbursable/billable activities. I also think it is because doctors often view these discussions as failures because they are hard-wired for curing and not for caring. I am interested to find out how my Dad’s doctors handle this–and how my Dad and I will handle it. A difficult conversation or series of conversations. My Dad told me last night he’s getting tired more easily and he hopes the cardiac surgeon can fix that soon.
JOSEPHINE ENSIGN 