C W’s Reviews > Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End > Status Update

"In all such cases, death is certain, but the timing isn't. So everyone struggles with this uncertainty- with how, and when, to accept that the battle is lost... In the past few decades, medical science has rendered obsolete centuries of experience, tradition, and language about our mortality and created a new difficulty for mankind: how to die."

"Three battles of being mortal is the battle to maintain the integrity of one's life... Sickness and old age make the struggle hard enough. The professionals and institutions we turn to... [increasingly] believe their job is not to confine people's choices in the name of safety but top expand them in the name of living a worthwhile life"

"You become a doctor for what you imagine to be the satisfaction of the work, and that turns out to be the satisfaction of competence... from being technically skilled... your competence gives you a secure sense of identity."