Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and what Matters in the End

Lou’s experience is very different from that of Sara Thomas Monopoli, who learns while pregnant at age thirty-four that she is dying of lung cancer. She undergoes chemotherapy, radiation and a series of medications that cause nearly debilitating side effects, yet it is apparent that time is still running out. Gawande contrasts these experiences with the hospice care offered to Lee Cox, who suffers from irreversible lung disease. Medication is offered to her but only to keep her comfortable, not under any pretense of cure. Similar care is given to Dave Galloway, whose pancreatic cancer was not able to be beaten back. Hospice care allows him to stay at home with his wife until the end. Because she is so young, Sara’s family holds out hope against hope that a cure will be found. After numerous rounds of chemo and radiations and more new, experimental medications, she contracts pneumonia, which kills her. Her death is drawn out and agonizing for Sara and her family and Gawande says that almost nothing done to Sara had achieved anything beyond making her worse.