A benefit for all Music Hall members, Book Club meets on the second Monday of the month in the lounge at Portwalk Place from 6-7:30pm. Evenings include time for socializing followed by a moderated discussion. This month’s title is Being Mortal by Atul Gawande.
About the Book:
Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming the dangers of childbirth, injury, and disease from harrowing to manageable. But when it comes to the inescapable realities of aging and death, what medicine can do often runs counter to what it should.
Through eye-opening research and gripping stories of his own patients and family, Gawande reveals the suffering this dynamic has produced. Nursing homes, devoted above all to safety, battle with residents over the food they are allowed to eat and the choices they are allowed to make. Doctors, uncomfortable discussing patients’ anxieties about death, fall back on false hopes and treatments that are actually shortening lives instead of improving them. And families go along with all of it.
In his bestselling books, Atul Gawande, a practicing surgeon, has fearlessly revealed the struggles of his profession. Now he examines its ultimate limitations and failures – in his own practices as well as others’ – as life draws to a close. And he discovers how we can do better. He follows a hospice nurse on her rounds, a geriatrician in his clinic, and reformers turning nursing homes upside down. He finds people who show us how to have the hard conversations and how to ensure we never sacrifice what people really care about.
Riveting, honest, and humane, Being Mortal shows that the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life – all the way to the very end.
To see upcoming Book Club events, click here.
About Our Moderator:
Clinton FredeRick Miller II, MD is a retired neurosurgeon/classical pianist, founding partner of Coastal NH Neurosurgeons, and former Chief of Staff of Portsmouth Regional Hospital where he practiced for 30 years. He is a graduate of Yale College/Yale School of Music and Duke Medical School. Rick and wife, Laurel Ann, live in Rye Harbor and are loyal Stakeholders of The Music Hall.