Facing Your Mortality

An examination of the chronically-critically ill. How end of life care occurs in a modern US hospital. And how it can teach us about our own mortality. 

Posted by Alexandru Nicolae

This is a 1-hour PBS documentary I stumbled on showing the growing issues faced by medical practitioners dealing with the chronicaly critically ill, and how their constant circling-the-drain health status impacts those around them. 

It's quite hard to watch at times because the patients are going through so much, as are their families, and they have minimal prospects of getting better.

The most interesting quote from the documentary, that these patients are in a state of limbo, a suspended animation, really outlined what modern medicine can do. It can keep people alive almost indefinitely, but is that necessarily an improvement on their quality of life? Millions of questions arise from this, hopefully we have answers one day, someday.