Atul Gawande Analysis

During spare time I've gotten the chance to sit down with author Atul Gawande. I began with asking him a few questions about his job and the few things that he may have gotten out of it. He gave me some pretty descriptive answers. The interview went as followed: Hello Mr. Gawande i have a few questions for you if you do mind;
How has being a doctor affected your life?
His answer: I had never seen anyone die before i became a doctor, and when i did, it came as a shock. Id seen multiple family members go through serious life-threatening illnesses but medicine had always pulled them through.
After coming across death, how did you react to it?
-Dying and death confront every new doctor and nurse. When i saw my first deaths, i was too guarded to weep. But i
had recurring nightmares in which id find my patients corpses in my house-even in my bed.
Has anyone actually help you to understand a life situation a little better?, and If so then who?
-Jewel Douglass, a 72 year old patient of mine receiving chemotherapy for metastatic ovarian cancer
How did you come into contact with Mrs.Douglass again?
-Her oncologist sent her to the hospital. A scan showed that despite treatment, her ovarian cancer had multiplied, grown, and partly obstructed her intestine. Her abdomen had also filled with fluid.
What made this visit with her, Mrs.Douglass, so different?
-Her oncologist and i had a menu of options to help Mrs.Douglass. A range of alternative chemotherapy regiments could be tried to shrink the tumor burden, and i had a few surgical options.
How could you help this women?
-I wouldnt be able to remove the intestinal blockage, but i might be able to bypass it. Or i could give her an ileostomy, i would also put in a couple of drainage catheters-permanent spigots that could be opened to release the fluids from her blocked-up drainage ducts or intestines when necessary.
What was Mrs.Douglass's response to these options?
-The options over-whelmed her. so i stepped back and asked her a few questions.
What were some questions that you asked her? and what were some
answers?
-What were her biggest fears and concerns? What goals were most important to her? What trade-offs was she willing to make? ; She said she wanted to be without pain, nausea, or vomiting. She wanted to eat. Most of all, she wanted to get back on her feet. Her biggest fear was that she wouldn't be able to return home.
What did you guys finally decide on doing?
-Surgery, but with no risky chances.
What was the ending results of the surgery?
-We put two long plastic drainage tubes in. One inserted directly into her stomach to empty the contents backed up there; the other we laid in the open abdominal cavity to empty the fluid outside her gut.
How long after her surgery did it take for her to get use to everything?
-Well... a few weeks later her daughter sent me a note, "Mom died on Friday morning. She drifted quietly to sleep and took her last breath. After the interview i asked him one more question before i let him go. The question was: In the end what did she teach you? His answer was very meaningful. He answered by saying, I believe that endings are not controllable. Mrs.Douglass taught me that we are not helpless and that courage is the strength to recognize realities.All in all we do not realize how much we ignore the older and more sickly people in life. Not only do they have to worry about living longer but the chance to tell a story about themselves. We have the opportunities to not only transform but also refashion the last chapters of our lives. The interview went really well with Mr. Gawande. It sounded like this women had a huge impact on the way he thought and went about life and death. It is not something that we should be afread of but something we should look at through another view. We cannot control what happens all the time so we should think of different ways to help explain the things that we have gone through in this thing we call life.