I read a book a few years ago by Dr. Atul Guwande, called "Being Mortal." A well written, brilliant book, Guwande's skill as a writer is almost unrivaled in the world of healthcare.
This book examines the life and death struggle within our current healthcare system; how programmed Doctors are to "save the patient/defeat the disease, etc..."
I thought of this passage and your situation as I drove home from work today:
"....doctors don’t listen, Gawande suggests—or, more accurately, they don’t know what to listen for. (Gawande includes examples of his own failings in this area.) Besides, they’ve been trained to want to find cures, attack problems—to win. But victory doesn’t look the same to everyone, he asserts. Yes, “death is the enemy,” he writes. “But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee... someone who knows how to fight for territory that can be won and how to surrender it when it can’t.” In his compassionate, learned way, Gawande shows all of us—doctors included—how mortality must be faced, with both heart and mind.
You know what to do...
You know how to do it...
Life's Rich Pageant, my friend...
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Bill in Dayton