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The Death Of Death

Decent Essays

Roughly, one-hundred five people die per minute or in other words, 55.3 million people die per year. Death is never a comfortable conversation to have with others but death is common especially among the elderly population. Atul Gawande in Being Mortal talks about how death takes many people by surprise and the descriptions of aging and dying. All the while living better through the understanding of death. The author is trying to express that even those in the medical field struggle with death and not ensuring the well-being of the patients that are coming in. He emphasis the idea of the elderly feeling “comfortable” in the state and location they are. Those who are growing of age never truly feel comfortable because they never know what …show more content…

It was a medical problem they could make an impact on. When the elderly are in assisted living communities they are fit into the caregivers schedule rather than their needs, such as scheduled bathroom breaks instead of having them as the patient needs. Gawande states that many of the elderly who live in assisted living communities and other communities feel as though they are in the hospital due to all the checks. One major example is that those who go to the bathroom regularly are just put into diapers rather than being taken to the bathroom whenever they need. There is a loss of freedom. “Our elderly are left with a controlled and supervised institutional existence, a medically designed answer to unfixable problems, a life designed to be safe but empty of anything they care about.” (Gawande, Year). The authors purpose is to make people more comfortable with talking about death to not only better prepare ourselves, because there is no preparation around death, but to better educate ourselves on the options we have. To build a health care system that allows people to fulfil their ambitions and be able to end life peacefully and content with what they accomplished. We all know we are going to die, we just don’t know when.
Through this well-written book that makes the reader feel like they’re there in the many situations that he

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