Previous
Laura Carstensen
Lazaroff is one of Gawande’s first patients, when Gawande is a junior resident at his hospital. Lazaroff is in his 60s and has metastatic prostate cancer, and when one day he can’t control his right leg or bowels, he elects to undergo surgery rather than enter hospice. While the surgery is technically successful, he never recovers from it, passing away two weeks later on a ventilator. Looking back on the incident, Gawande observes that the doctors failed Lazaroff because they didn’t properly communicate that the surgery would not give him back his old life.
Joseph Lazaroff Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Joseph Lazaroff or refer to Joseph Lazaroff. 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:
).
Introduction
Quotes
You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Being Mortal LitChart as a printable PDF.
Joseph Lazaroff Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Joseph Lazaroff or refer to Joseph Lazaroff. 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:
).
Introduction
Quotes
You don’t have to spend much time with the elderly or those with terminal illness to see how often medicine fails the people it is supposed to help. The waning days of our lives are given over to treatments that addle our brains and sap our bodies for a sliver’s chance of benefit. They are spent in institutions—nursing homes and intensive care units—where regimented, anonymous routines cut us off from all the things that matter to us in life. Our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying has increased the harm we inflict on people and denied them the basic comforts they most need. Lacking a coherent view of how people might live successfully all the way to their very end, we have allowed our fates to be controlled by the imperatives of medicine, technology, and strangers.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
