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Bella Silverstone
Paul Marcoux is Gawande’s colleague and Sara Monopoli’s oncologist. Marcoux provides Sara with many treatment options for her terminal lung cancer, but he never truly helps her confront the reality of her disease. While he knows that his treatments can buy her maybe a year or two, he recognizes that she probably hopes they’ll extend her life by decades. While Sara states that she doesn’t want to die in the hospital, her four rounds of chemotherapy ultimately suppress her immune system and she dies in the hospital from pneumonia. Thus, the inability to help Sara understand her imminent death prevents her from truly assessing her priorities and dying in the way that she wishes.
Dr. Paul Marcoux Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Dr. Paul Marcoux or refer to Dr. Paul Marcoux. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
It’s worth pausing to consider what had just happened. Step by step, Sara ended up on a fourth round of chemotherapy, one with a minuscule likelihood of altering the course of her disease and a great likelihood of causing debilitating side effects. An opportunity to prepare for the inevitable was forgone. And it all happened because of an assuredly normal circumstance: a patient and family unready to confront the reality of her disease.
I asked Marcoux what he hopes to accomplish for terminal lung cancer patients when they first come to see him. “I’m thinking, can I get them a pretty good year or two out of this?” he said. “Those are my expectations. For me, the long tail for a patient like her is three to four years.” But this is not what people want to hear. “They’re thinking ten to twenty years. You hear that time and time again. And I’d be the same way if I were in their shoes.”
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Dr. Paul Marcoux Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Dr. Paul Marcoux or refer to Dr. Paul Marcoux. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 6
Quotes
It’s worth pausing to consider what had just happened. Step by step, Sara ended up on a fourth round of chemotherapy, one with a minuscule likelihood of altering the course of her disease and a great likelihood of causing debilitating side effects. An opportunity to prepare for the inevitable was forgone. And it all happened because of an assuredly normal circumstance: a patient and family unready to confront the reality of her disease.
I asked Marcoux what he hopes to accomplish for terminal lung cancer patients when they first come to see him. “I’m thinking, can I get them a pretty good year or two out of this?” he said. “Those are my expectations. For me, the long tail for a patient like her is three to four years.” But this is not what people want to hear. “They’re thinking ten to twenty years. You hear that time and time again. And I’d be the same way if I were in their shoes.”
Related Characters:
Related Symbols:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
