Mortality options 101

How to Die

By BILL KELLER, NYT

ONE morning last month, Anthony Gilbey awakened from anesthesia in a hospital in the east of England. At his bedside were his daughter and an attending physician.

The surgery had been unsuccessful, the doctor informed him. There was nothing more that could be done.

“So I’m dying?” the patient asked.

The doctor hesitated. “Yes,” he said.

“You’re dying, Dad,” his daughter affirmed.

“So,” the patient mused, “no more whoop-de-doo.”

“On the other side, there’ll be loads,” his daughter — my wife — promised.

The patient laughed. “Yes,” he said. He was dead six days later, a few months shy of his 80th birthday.

When they told my father-in-law the hospital had done all it could, that was not, in the strictest sense, true. There was nothing the doctors could do about the large, inoperable tumor colonizing his insides. But they could have maintained his failing kidneys by putting him on dialysis. They could have continued pumping insulin to control his diabetes. He wore a pacemaker that kept his heart beating regardless of what else was happening to him, so with aggressive treatment they could — and many hospitals would — have sustained a kind of life for a while.

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