Previous
Bill Thomas
Susan Block is a palliative care specialist at Gawande’s hospital. She personally understands the importance of having difficult conversations with patients, as she had a difficult conversation with her father Jack before a risky surgery about what kind of life would be acceptable to him. But when complications arose during the surgery, she was grateful to have had the conversation, because only by having it could she properly guide the doctors on how to treat her father.
Susan Block Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Susan Block or refer to Susan Block. 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
“If I had not had that conversation with him,” she told me, “my instinct would have been to let him go at that moment because it just seemed so awful. And I would have beaten myself up. Did I let him go too soon?” Or she might have gone ahead and sent him to surgery, only to find—as occurred—that he was faced with a year of “very horrible rehab” and disability. “I would have felt so guilty that I condemned him to that,” she said. “But there was no decision for me to make.” He had decided.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
I realized then that my father had already told us what to do, just as Susan Block’s father had. My dad was more afraid of becoming quadriplegic than of dying. I therefore asked Benzel which posed the greater risk of his becoming quadriplegic in the next couple months: stopping or proceeding? Stopping, he said. We told him to proceed.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Being Mortal LitChart as a printable PDF.
Susan Block Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Susan Block or refer to Susan Block. 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
“If I had not had that conversation with him,” she told me, “my instinct would have been to let him go at that moment because it just seemed so awful. And I would have beaten myself up. Did I let him go too soon?” Or she might have gone ahead and sent him to surgery, only to find—as occurred—that he was faced with a year of “very horrible rehab” and disability. “I would have felt so guilty that I condemned him to that,” she said. “But there was no decision for me to make.” He had decided.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 7
Quotes
I realized then that my father had already told us what to do, just as Susan Block’s father had. My dad was more afraid of becoming quadriplegic than of dying. I therefore asked Benzel which posed the greater risk of his becoming quadriplegic in the next couple months: stopping or proceeding? Stopping, he said. We told him to proceed.
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
