The FELC Book Club will meet Sunday, October 13, 1-3 PM, at the home of Kymrie Dinsmore. We will share a potluck lunch and discuss our October book, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gawande, available at Austin Public Library, Amazon, and Bookfinder.
Here’s the summary from amazon.com:
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit. Gawande, a practicing surgeon, addresses his profession’s ultimate limitation, arguing that quality of life is the desired goal for patients and families. Gawande offers examples of freer, more socially fulfilling models for assisting the infirm and dependent elderly, and he explores the varieties of hospice care to demonstrate that a person’s last weeks or months may be rich and dignified. Full of eye-opening research and riveting storytelling, Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life – all the way to the very end.