How Doctors Die

“How Doctors Die” by Ken Murray

            “How Doctors Die” is a slightly morbid essay, and bears significant thematic resembance to the essay “The Good Short Life” by Dudley Clendinen. In the essay, physician Ken Murray discusses the care of patients who are very near death. He calls this care “futile care” because there is no chance in the patient making a recovery. While their life is prolonged, it is often in considerable pain and discomfort. Murray explains that because doctors see this pain and suffering, they often choose to forgo life-support and other medical procedures at the end of their life, reducing potential suffering as well as medical costs. Instead they accept their condition, and accept death.

            Murray, who has been a physician for over 25 years, has plenty of experiences to draw from. He is able to use exemplification to demonstrate the pain and suffering he sees, as to help the reader, assumedly an average person, understand the mindset of doctors. He describes one patient, a lawyer with diabetes and bad circulation who developed an infectious sore on her foot. Against Murray’s recommendation, she was ushered into surgery. Her wounds wouldn’t heal, causing her to have double amputations. She later died due to complications in a medical facility. Though measures were taken to try to save this woman’s life, her last moments were not happy ones.

            Murray also describes he cousin, Torch, who was diagnosed with brain and lung cancer. The cancer would need intense treatment, as Murray describes, “we  learned that with aggressive treatment of his condition, including three to five hospital visits a week for chemotherapy, he would live perhaps four months” (235). Instead Torch lives at home with his cousin, and his months were happy: “He had no serious pain, and remained high-spirited” (235). He died later, peacefully in his sleep.

            Through his well chosen examples, Murray is able to successfully explain his mindset on end-of-life care. Like Dudley Clendinen, he believes that quality trumps quantity, and is surprised that so many Americans choose to tell the doctors to do “everything they can”, even when life-saving efforts are futile. But, perhaps it is only human to cling to life, especially in the case of a loved one. Like Clendinen said in his essay “The Good Short Life” Americans don’t know how to talk about death. Maybe if we did we could be more accepting, and more people could live out their final days in peace.

"I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me... 'Promise me if you find me like this that you'll kill me.' They mean it."  (232)

N.d. Photograph. The Los Angeles Times. The Los Angeles Times, 10 Aug. 2009. Web. 9 Aug. 2013.