Being Mortal

by

Atul Gawande

Sara Monopoli Character Analysis

Sara Monopoli is one of Gawande’s patients. Sara is diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer at 34 years old. Her oncologist, Paul Marcoux, provides her with several different chemotherapy options, but he is hesitant to tell her that she likely only has about a year to live. Gawande also treats her for a second, unrelated thyroid cancer, but he also avoids talking with her realistically about how much time she has left. Sara undergoes four rounds of chemotherapy, none of which help her prognosis. She tells her family that she doesn’t want to die in the hospital, but because the doctors keep giving her treatment options with some hope for increasing her lifespan, she jumps at the chance for each one. But ultimately this actually hurts her: her immune system is so suppressed from the chemotherapy that she lands in the hospital with severe pneumonia and passes away. Gawande views her case as a failure on the doctors’ part to help her confront her mortality and talk about the treatment options that best fit what she wanted.

Sara Monopoli Quotes in Being Mortal

The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Sara Monopoli or refer to Sara Monopoli. 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:
Medicine, Survival, and Well-being Theme Icon
).
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: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Sara Monopoli, Dr. Paul Marcoux, Laura Carstensen
Related Symbols: Hospital
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:

The result: those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Sara Monopoli
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

In truth, neither type is quite what people desire. We want information and control, but we also want guidance. The Emanuels described a third type of doctor-patient relationship, which they called “interpretive.” Here the doctor’s role is to help patients determine what they want. Interpretive doctors ask, “What is most important to you? What are your worries?” Then, when they know your answers, they tell you about the red pill and the blue pill and which one would most help you achieve your priorities.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Dr. Edward Benzel (speaker), Gawande’s Father, Sara Monopoli
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

When our time is limited and we are uncertain about how best to serve our priorities, we are forced to deal with the fact that both the experiencing self and the remembering self matter. We do not want to endure long pain and short pleasure. Yet certain pleasures can make enduring suffering worthwhile. The peaks are important, and so is the ending.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Gawande’s Father, Jewel Douglass, Sara Monopoli
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Being Mortal LitChart as a printable PDF.
Being Mortal PDF

Sara Monopoli Quotes in Being Mortal

The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Sara Monopoli or refer to Sara Monopoli. 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:
Medicine, Survival, and Well-being Theme Icon
).
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: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Sara Monopoli, Dr. Paul Marcoux, Laura Carstensen
Related Symbols: Hospital
Page Number: 167
Explanation and Analysis:

The result: those who saw a palliative care specialist stopped chemotherapy sooner, entered hospice far earlier, experienced less suffering at the end of their lives—and they lived 25 percent longer. In other words, our decision making in medicine has failed so spectacularly that we have reached the point of actively inflicting harm on patients rather than confronting the subject of mortality. If end-of-life discussions were an experimental drug, the FDA would approve it.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Sara Monopoli
Page Number: 178
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7 Quotes

In truth, neither type is quite what people desire. We want information and control, but we also want guidance. The Emanuels described a third type of doctor-patient relationship, which they called “interpretive.” Here the doctor’s role is to help patients determine what they want. Interpretive doctors ask, “What is most important to you? What are your worries?” Then, when they know your answers, they tell you about the red pill and the blue pill and which one would most help you achieve your priorities.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Dr. Edward Benzel (speaker), Gawande’s Father, Sara Monopoli
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

When our time is limited and we are uncertain about how best to serve our priorities, we are forced to deal with the fact that both the experiencing self and the remembering self matter. We do not want to endure long pain and short pleasure. Yet certain pleasures can make enduring suffering worthwhile. The peaks are important, and so is the ending.

Related Characters: Dr. Atul Gawande (speaker), Gawande’s Father, Jewel Douglass, Sara Monopoli
Page Number: 239
Explanation and Analysis: