In Death Interrupted, ICU doctor Blair Bigham shares his firsthand experiences of how medicine has complicated the way we die and offers a road map for dying in the modern era.
Doctors today can call on previously unimaginable technologies to help keep our bodies alive. In this new era, most organs can be kept from dying almost indefinitely by machines. But this unprecedented shift in end-of-life care has created a major crisis. In the widening grey zone between life and death, doctors fight with doctors, families feel pressured to make tough decisions about their loved ones, and lawyers are left to argue life-and-death cases in the courts. Meanwhile, intensive-care patients are caught in purgatory, attached to machines and unable to speak for themselves.
