Sunita Puri

“This is an informative but overly long book on palliative care. The author perhaps attempts to do a few too many things: She describes her training in internal medicine, then as a palliative care fellow and physician; provides stories of many of the dying and terminally ill patients she has worked with; considers the role that religion/faith/spiritual practice often play in the lives of the dying and their caregivers; and, finally, she details the profound influence her spiritual, socially committed, immigrant Indian parents (particularly her mother, an anesthesiologist) had on her development. I found Dr. Puri’s presentation of her challenges with the families of dying patients and her struggles with medical colleagues the most compelling parts of the book. Her meditations on spirituality and death as a sacred passage, however, became tiresome. The doctor aims at being profound, but at times her writing slides towards the precious. Here is an example of the kind of thing I mean:

“You imagine that each of them [your patients] wears a necklace of intricate, intersecting circles of loss, grief, anger, fear, sadness, regret. You visualize this necklace hanging at their throats, golden and glistening under the hospital’s fluorescent lights, in the moments when their expressions of emotion make you want to leave the room. This is a necklace that you choose to wear, too.”

I think the book would have benefited from some paring down. I wish, for example, that there had been fewer stories of family members demanding that “everything” be done for the patient (when it is abundantly clear that further aggressive interventions are not only futile but harmful). One or two such stories are potent enough. (I feel as though I read dozens of them in this book.) The many descriptions of views from hospital windows and meals eaten on the run should have been entirely cut.

Reservations aside, I learned a lot from reading the book, and Dr. Puri comes across as a very sincere and honest guide to this still developing field of medicine.… (mais)

Sunita Puri is a doctor who specializes in palliative medicine where she combines spirituality with medicine in helping her patients through their most difficult days. She describes her childhood, the daughter of immigrants with a mother who was also a doctor. While she followed her mother into medicine, she forged her own path. Having a parent who benefited greatly from this type of care before his death, I know firsthand how important this type of work is, and how necessary. She describes interactions with some of her patients and fellow physicians to illustrate her points, making this a very enjoyable read, despite the seriousness of the topic. The bottom line is that we should all have these discussions so that there are no questions when this time comes for us all.… (mais)