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And finally : matters of life and death by…
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And finally : matters of life and death (edition 2022)

by Henry Marsh

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1197227,791 (3.63)4
"From the bestselling neurosurgeon and author of Do No Harm, comes Henry Marsh's And Finally, an unflinching and deeply personal exploration of death, life and neuroscience. As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence. As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age. But he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and the brain, the beauty of the natural world and his love for his family. Elegiac, candid, luminous and poignant, And Finally is ultimately not so much a book about death, but a book about life and what matters in the end"--… (more)
Member:EJFROMWI
Title:And finally : matters of life and death
Authors:Henry Marsh
Info:London, UK : Jonathan Cape, 2022.
Collections:Audio, To read, Your library
Rating:
Tags:Nonfiction

Work Information

And Finally: Matters of Life and Death by Henry Marsh

  1. 00
    When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (bluepiano)
    bluepiano: A more linear & autobiographical account of dealing with a terminal diagnosis written by a younger neurosurgeon.
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» See also 4 mentions

Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
This book focuses on how the doctor becomes a patient himself with advanced stage prostate cancer. In general, most medical professionals make the worst patients and I can make this declaration as a medical professional myself. There always a struggle with the vulnerability of being the patient after years of helping others. It's easier to see the struggles in others probably more so to avoid acknowledging our own issues.

I understand Dr Marsh's mindset of thinking like a doctor after retirement and then as a patient. It's not just an occupation but a part of your identity. I don't think it necessary for me to read his other books to understand that this one is deeply reflective on his unique and unexpected position in life as a cancer patient. There are many advances in medicine over the years and being a patient allows a perspective that one might not otherwise imagine. Denial is a powerful coping mechanism which ultimately fails us in the end. Although, I found his writing to be overanalytical I respect his dedication and need to share his life experience. I have read many books about the transformation that can occur when a doctor, particularly a surgeon, becomes a cancer patient. There is a tremendous amount of humility knowing that we all share the same destiny.

I know my review is rather critical but I did say that medical professionals make the worst patients as well as critical thinkers.

Thanks to NetGalley and St Martin's Press for allowing me access to this digital book for review. I provide an honest and unbiased review. All opinions are expressly my own. ( )
1 vote marquis784 | Mar 22, 2024 |
A candid and well-written memoir about a surgeon's confrontation with his own mortality through his own cancer diagnosis and treatment. This would be a good book for anyone going through a recent cancer diagnosis. Uplifting and down to earth. Totally immersive. ( )
  mskrypuch | Sep 24, 2023 |
Somewhat interesting, but way too much about his carpentry. ( )
1 vote RickGeissal | Aug 16, 2023 |
Henry Marsh’s books are compulsively readable for me; I tend to tear through them in a few hours. This book is no exception. Covering mainly the COVID-19 era but with threads throughout Marsh’s life, this book is about his diagnosis of prostate cancer, becoming a patient as a doctor, and coming to grips with mortality. It made for interesting reading immediately after What Doctors Feel, because Marsh is a retired neurosurgeon and is able to reflect on his whole career and discover a new perspective on medicine. I was touched that he found teaching the next generation more rewarding than being a surgeon himself. ( )
1 vote rabbitprincess | Aug 12, 2023 |
More like a 3.5 but I don't see the option. This is a rather weird, disjointed ramble through the mind of a retired British surgeon who has been diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. This puts him in the position of patient rather than doctor, so on the other side of the table, and it has him reassessing his career and his approach to patient consultations of the past. It certainly has value but he wanders off into pathways and other areas of London that I have no clue about, and his reconstructing a doll house for his granddaughters - wonderful things as stand-alone experiences, but kinda left this reader wondering. Still, lots of inside info on the medical profession and the limits and capabilities of medical science, especially the prostate cancer issues. Just be prepared for a bit of meandering. ( )
1 vote Cantsaywhy | Jun 14, 2023 |
Showing 1-5 of 7 (next | show all)
The neurosurgeon Henry Marsh – well known for his two previous books Do No Harm: Stories of life, death and brain surgery (2014) and Admissions: A life in brain surgery (2017) – has now retired from a distinguished career in London and post-retirement work in Nepal and Ukraine, and over the past few years has revealed himself as a stalwart and sane advocate for what is generally called “assisted dying”. He points out that “Many countries have now legalised assisted dying – for instance, Belgium, Canada, Spain, New Zealand, Germany, several American states, Austria and the Netherlands. The list steadily grows”. Yet in the UK, even though 84 per cent of those polled in 2019 favoured a change in the law, successive governments have failed to set up a committee to look at real evidence and results elsewhere.

This has led to a series of private members’ bills being talked out by a small but vociferous minority who advance fears of everything from corruption, coercion and bullying by families to law change as an excuse for providing less treatment and hospice care – none of which is borne out by the experience of the countries Marsh lists. Assisted dying, he says, “should be seen as part of palliative care and not in opposition to it … It is, in fact, unofficially practised in the UK but takes the form of ‘terminal sedation’. This is a dishonest fudge … done without any meaningful discussion with patient or family”. He adds a little later that those who wish this system to continue “claim to be compassionate but in reality are responsible for much suffering”.

Marsh himself may not quite live to see the day of liberation. He has advanced prostate cancer, and his belated discovery of this fact forms an integral part of this book, though there are only passing references to it in the first half. It is not until the second half that he supplies the detail, and one understands that the title And Finally may be appropriate. Or not. As Marsh is at pains to explain, doctors do not know as much as their patients want them to, and can only predict in terms of statistical probabilities. Now that he no longer has patients’ feelings to consider, he is able to be admirably cogent and honest. Near the book’s beginning he writes: “Long life is not necessarily a good thing. Perhaps we should not seek it too desperately”. And later: “Will our lives be any more meaningful just because we have managed to postpone death?” Also: “Assisted dying … is about patient autonomy and choice”. “The illegality of assisted dying … means that it is illegal to help somebody do something that is not illegal. Surely this is wildly illogical?”

Yet there is another strand in this intelligent and dynamic man’s attitude to his own demise, that end that we all (except, apparently, for a few American millionaires with tunnel vision) know that we must reach. For in the intervals of explaining with enthusiasm what we do and do not understand about the brain’s function, about consciousness, about how radiotherapy and chemotherapy actually work, about the pan-religious delusion of human exceptionalism and the fact that the very concept of past and future has no place in theoretical physics, we come across a sudden admission of “a deep, irrational fear of death itself, of nothingness”. Having treated us to a detailed and occasionally very funny account of his own treatment, as well as the disconcerting downgrade of finding himself in the “under-class role of patient” (“I got the distinct impression that I had not tried hard enough … and that I was being potty-trained all over again”), he suddenly acknowledges: “if I have a few more years, I will no doubt try to bargain for a few more, once my disease has returned. My urge to go on living is so overwhelming”. Finally, with his cancer having been driven into some sort of abeyance, comes an admission of “my ridiculous inability to accept the inevitability of my death – indeed, its necessity”.

Not all of us feel the need to join Marsh in that particular version of angst, and perhaps we are lucky not to. Perhaps, too, this attachment to the idea of going on and on living is part of the energy that has sent him in retirement to treat patients in distant parts of the world, that has made him bully the management in hospitals for armchairs and rugs, pictures and green plants. The same zest for life, he admits, has led him into a legal quarrel with Oxford neighbours, and into an unwise credulousness when approached by two men offering to mend his roof. It has also led him to tell small granddaughters nightly in lockdown, by Zoom, a complex fairy tale featuring racist dragons, a subsiding fairy castle, a unicorn with Droopy Horn Disease, mixed-race spotted baby dragons and much, much more, going on for six pages near the end of this fascinating, unusually revelatory, ultimately conflicted and poignant account. Acontinuing story to which he himself may not be there to write “The End”.
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"From the bestselling neurosurgeon and author of Do No Harm, comes Henry Marsh's And Finally, an unflinching and deeply personal exploration of death, life and neuroscience. As a retired brain surgeon, Henry Marsh thought he understood illness, but he was unprepared for the impact of his diagnosis of advanced cancer. And Finally explores what happens when someone who has spent a lifetime on the frontline of life and death finds himself contemplating what might be his own death sentence. As he navigates the bewildering transition from doctor to patient, he is haunted by past failures and projects yet to be completed, and frustrated by the inconveniences of illness and old age. But he is also more entranced than ever by the mysteries of science and the brain, the beauty of the natural world and his love for his family. Elegiac, candid, luminous and poignant, And Finally is ultimately not so much a book about death, but a book about life and what matters in the end"--

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