treatment after treatment, which made her sicker and sicker and sicker? >> narrator: and making peace with the end. >> in the last four weeks i've been surrounded by family and friends. some of the best days of my life, i must say. >> narrator: tonight on frontline, "being mortal." >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support for frontline is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information is available at macfound.org. additional support is provided by the park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. at fordfoundation.org. the wyncote foundation. and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler, and additional support from chris and lisa kaneb. support for "being mortal" is provided by the john and wauna harman foundation. (sirens blaring) >> atul gawande: i've been a surgeon for more than a decade now. in medicine, your first fear as a doctor is that you're supposed to be able to fix a problem, and our anxieties include wanting to seem competent, and to us competent means "i can fix this." in fact there's often a kind of implicit promise, "i'm going to be able to fix this, i'm going to certainly give you the best shot you can have. nobody could have given you a better shot." and then when things aren't working, part of your anxiety is, was there something i missed, was there anything else i could have done? when i started out in my training in surgery, you discover that all the stuff you learned about in the books in medical school is really just a tiny little bit of what it means to be good at doing our jobs. it's not just about how smart you are anymore as a doctor, it's about how you have to be able to work with teams, and how mistakes get made and how you handle them, and how you learn. among the most uncomfortable difficulties was grappling with those cases where we couldn't solve the problem. the two big unfixables are aging and dying. you know they're not... you can't fix those. i'm a surgeon and i'm a writer. my writing has become the way that i can focus in and begin to understand the problems that most confuse me. one case in point was a piece i wrote called letting go about a woman named sara monopoli whom i helped take care of who was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer during the ninth month of her pregnancy at the age of 34. this was one of the most difficult circumstances. you have a young woman with a brand new baby. of course everybody is fighting for every chance that she's got. she was young, she's enthusiastic, she wants to tackle this. you don't want to be the downer. so you're looking, you're grasping for a straw that says "well there's something here that's going to be beneficial." stage four lung cancer, we know it's not curable, but suppose she's the one that somehow gets cured. maybe she's the one. and so therefore we should do all these things to her. having any kind of discussion that would begin to say, "look you probably only have a few months to live. what do we do to make the best of that time, without giving up on the options that you have?" that was a conversation i wasn't ready to have. i don't think any of us were. >> gawande: hey there. >> dr. gawande, how are you? >> gawande: how are you? >> come on in. >> gawande: take me back to when she's pregnant, she's doing great, 39 weeks, your due date is coming, and? >> the collapsed lung would not allow for a c-section. it was too dangerous to be opening her up with all that fluid build up, so sara had vivian basically pushing with one lung. it was so difficult, but she had the baby. you want to be part of that 15% that survives more than five years. you want to be part of that group so badly. and you say to yourself, why not us, you know? it wasn't about "how can we have good days to the end?" we didn't focus on that enough. we're trying to stabilize the situation and try to become a little... spend a little bit of time as a family. but it was just... it was an impossible situation, impossible summer. i mean it's just excruciating. >> gawande: when i came on the scene was when she got diagnosed with a second cancer. you know, in my mind what i was thinking was i wouldn't offer this surgery because the lung cancer is going to take her life. and yet i didn't feel i could say that to you all. i think we started talking about the experimental therapy that you all would like, or were hoping to get on for a trial with the lung cancer. and i remember saying something i sort of regret, which was, you know, maybe that experimental therapy will work for the thyroid cancer, too. i said that. and i know it was complete... >> well, you had joined us in our sunny disposition, hoping for the best. >> gawande: i knew, i knew it was not going to... i mean i... in other words, the reason i regret it is because i knew it was a complete lie. i just was wanting something positive to say. >> i did not know it was an outright lie. you could lose your license for that, you know. >> gawande: i know. but, you know, i think... i don't think i was terribly equipped for having that conversation. maybe you all weren't. >> i don't think we were. i've thought often about what did that cost us? what did... what did we miss out on? what did we forego by consistently pursuing treatment after treatment after treatment, which made her sicker and sicker and sicker? >> gawande: the very last week of her life she had brain radiation, she was planned for the experimental therapy the following monday. you woke up and she wasn't doing so well. on a friday. what happened then? >> so she woke up and was gasping for air and i tried to crank the oxygen up, i said, "let's max this thing out, maybe we would get a bigger oxygen machine." we were so close to getting to the next potential fix. and she said, "i can't do this. i can't do it at home. i'm too scared. i'm gasping for air and i can't can't do this." we should have started earlier with the effort to have quality time together. the chemo had made her so weak that she couldn't hold vivian. it was exhausting. and that was not... that was not a good outcome for... for the final, final months. it's not where we wanted to be. (sniffles) >> gawande: in the last three months of her life, almost nothing we'd done-- the radiation, the chemotherapy-- had likely done anything except make her worse. it may have shortened her life. what was interesting to me was how uncomfortable i was and how unable i was to deal well with her circumstances. it felt like a revelation in that here was a case which i could unpack enough to understand, why do we always go off the rails? it made me want to explore what other doctors were doing in these extremely difficult circumstances. and what i hoped was that maybe i might learn something that i should be doing differently. i work at the brigham & women's hospital and the dana farber cancer institute in boston. they're connected together across one street. it's here that my colleagues let me observe their experiences with patients facing the end of life. the struggles and the difficult choices. one was lakshmi nayak. she's a specialist in cancer of the brain. and she has to have these end of life discussions with almost all of her patients. you picked a pretty tough field, right? so how many of your patients will you cure or help them have a better life? >> it's almost always fatal. we have, you know, each of us has an odd patient who survived for ten years or 15 years, but that's less than 5% of all of the patients that suffer from the most common malignant brain tumor. so yes, i don't get to tell people, "i'm going to cure you." >> gawande: one of dr. nayak's most challenging cases at the time was a man named bill brooks. he was 46 years old. >> bill has brain cancer. that basically in his case has led to raised pressure in his head. but he feels really well. bill's sister had also died of a brain tumor, and that was what he was worried of the most. >> how do they look? >> they look delicious. (chuckles) >> they always look delicious. everything is good for you, you eat anything. you know, we're so lucky, we have each other, we have great families, we have great friends, we got great jobs, we live in a beautiful home, we've been lucky. and then, you know, all of a sudden, it's like our world was turned upside down. >> it's a battle. you know, some people say don't listen to the numbers, and i always say, "well that gives me something to shoot for." you know, if they tell you five years, let's go for six, seven or ten. >> that's good, you were right. >> told you. >> so bill's story from the very beginning has been challenging, because when i first saw him, i thought he had five to ten years. that changed. his symptoms started getting more aggressive. >> gawande: the headaches? >> the headaches. the not being able to lie down. i actually called mary. i said, "we don't have much time, we probably have a few days to a month." and i told her she should take time off work. >> he started having pressure in his head. and we... >> it's okay. (sniffles) it's okay. >> paper towels, this is good. so. dr. nayak gets very um... >> she takes it very personal. >> she takes it very personally when she wants... has to give us bad news. she basically just told us to get ready, and so, you know, of course you have your pity party. and then you kind of like don't give up hope. >> it's okay, sweetie. >> gawande: so after the phone call, dr. nayak ordered a series of spinal taps to relieve the pressure in bill's brain and it worked. the pressure came down, he felt better, and they had new hope. but the disease was still progressing. >> you started having some pressure? can i check a few things? >> yeah, absolutely. >> eyes wide open. what i was looking into your eyes was not the way your pupils reacted was, but to see what the pressure might be. and i'm worried that the disease will be growing. >> i think that it's important for us even though it would be easier to sort of skip over this today. that we should talk about if things are not going as we hope, to just talk about worse case scenarios a little bit. >> and then best case scenario too. what do you think? >> best case, obviously, you know, we'll just continue what we're doing if you think that's the right path. >> gawande: what made you jump in to say, "best case, as well as worst case?" >> i think that i'd scared them the first time. >> gawande: you're thinking back to when you talked about it before. >> yeah. >> gawande: and you were worried that you'd lose their confidence if you only talked about the bad side. >> yeah and especially because he had been responding to treatment. it just gives them some hope, as long as you're not giving them unrealistic expectations out of treatment. >> it's worth a shot. >> what's the third option? >> there is no third option. >> there has to be a third option. >> we do things together, we often are finishing each other's sentences. if dr. nayak had said, "let's talk about worst-case scenarios," then i would have said, "and we'll talk about best-case scenarios." >> have you thought at all as far as worse-case scenarios go if you would want hospice at home or hospice at a facility or...? >> do it at home. >> when we talked about hospice, i was reading mary's body language that was sort of saying to me, "don't go there." but given all the things that were going wrong, i felt like we had to do that. >> have you thought about anything after the mri? >> my thought, and mary's heard me say it a lot, is i want to see the next one to kind of see if it's showing anything or not before i start to get worried or get too hopeful. >> thank you. >> thanks. good to see you. >> good to see you. >> gawande: it was amazing to see how my colleagues had these conversations. and it was teaching me what i might do better for my own patients. it turned out it also taught me how to do better for my dad. he got some bad news, back home in ohio. i remember i took notes in my journal around that time. do you remember when dad first started to get pain in his neck? >> he had pain in his shoulder and he thought that either playing too much tennis or just muscle. so when the result came, we were in a shock. >> gawande: he'd gotten an mri. and as a surgeon he knew the results were not good. he emailed the images, i opened them up and it's a huge mass and it's concerning. he called me up and as we're piecing it together over the phone, we're kind of realizing this is right in the middle of the spinal cord. so the puzzle is how do you get this out? we're two surgeons looking at a mass, it's like two carpenters looking at a house. you know, you're not saying, "ah yeah we can't fix this." but, you know, at the end of that conversation, "yeah, i'm, i'm thinking this could... this could be a life- threatening problem." it was hard for us, as a family, to talk about this. and that's despite three of us being doctors. in fact, talking with anyone near the end of life about their decisions is so difficult that there are actually physicians who specialize in the process. they're called palliative care physicians, people like kathy selvaggi, who works at the dana farber. her technique is as much about listening as it is about talking. what would be on your checklist for what i should make sure i do when i'm doing it next time? >> first of all, i think it's important that you ask what their understanding is of their disease. i think that is first and foremost, because oftentimes what we say as physicians is not what the patient hears. and if there are things that you want to do, let's think about what they are and can we get them accomplished? >> gawande: you know, people have priorities besides just living longer. >> yes. >> gawande: you got to ask what those priorities are. and then you got to tune the treatment to those priorities. >> exactly. and if we don't ask, and if we don't have these discussions, we don't know. hello, i'm dr. selvaggi, i'm kathy. >> gawande: dr. selvaggi works with doctors throughout the hospital to help with their hardest patient conversations. >> so how are you feeling? >> a little better than i was when first came in here the other day. >> gawande: aymen elfiky was one of those doctors, he's an oncologist who, like me, grapples with reaching good decisions with his patients about dying. he'd been caring for a patient named norma babineau for two years. he said that during that time he had tried to broach how dire her prognosis was, but he had not been successful >> let me start by giving you both an overview where we're at now. because the cancer has developed a more aggressive course to it, right? it's a more resistant type. this is where the tough discussions, uh, come up. the disease, we knew, has been acting up. right now, in this state, the treatment would hurt you more than help you. that's just a fact. and you would not get the benefit of it. >> is there a time, you think, a timeline, or...? >> we could be talking about three to four months. we can be longer, it can certainly be shorter if the pace picks up. >> there's miracles that can happen in between. >> it's a question you had to ask, and i don't want you to dwell on that. if i were going to bet on somebody doing better, it would be... i would be betting on you to do better than that timeline. >> our goal is, for whatever time is left, is to make it the best quality that we can. >> but i need to take the baby to... >> to where? >> to walt disney. >> to do walt disney. >> yeah, i'm going to take her for christmas. we got to find the right medicine to get me better so i can take my trips. >> gawande: so the really hard part, i find, in these situations is, you know it'll come to this point, when do you help them understand that? what's going through your mind though, what's it feel like to you? >> that i wish i could do better. >> gawande: still feels like a little bit of a failure for us doesn't it? >> it's very much a failure, and it's hard. >> gawande: even though you knew from the beginning you weren't going to be able to... you... you weren't curing this problem. >> right. it's just a fight mentality that perhaps goes back to training in med school and just the way we are wired and we're not trained for that other mode. >> that's where we have to take our cues. >> gawande: palliative care doctors like kathy selvaggi are different. they're teaching us there might be a better way in these circumstances. >> you know i think, i think it's hard to hear sometimes the timeline. but i think it's also important to have a sense because if there are things that you want to say or do or people that you want to see, it helps you to find that time a little better. i think she knew that she was getting sicker and weaker. one of the goals was to try and get her home with hospice services. but the medications and the things that we're requiring, it's just not going to happen. >> gawande: forget disney world, we're not even knowing whether we can leave the hospital. >> exactly. >> gawande: so we didn't do that before last monday. feels really late in the game, you know? >> um, it does feel a little bit late in the game. we, you know, we're all sort of taught that in order to make a difference in our patients' lives, we have to be doing something. we have to be operating, we have to be giving them a medication we have to be radiating, we have to be giving chemotherapy. in some ways i think the medicine is the easy part. it's all of this other stuff that's much harder to deal with. how are you? >> good, how are you? >> i wanted to talk with you about... um, i know the other day, norma, we talked about, um, where to go from here. you may need more and more iv or intravenous medications to control your symptoms, and i'm worried that we're not going to be able to do that at home. >> what do you think about that? >> yeah, i think it's coming close. >> when you say "coming close," that we're coming near the end? >> yes. >> yeah. i worry about the same thing. and what we'll do is we'll... we'll keep you here and we'll take care of you here. okay? yeah. all right, norma. all right. we'll see you a little later okay? okay. and i'll get, um... why don't i clear this out for you? >> gawande: kathy selvaggi had helped norma understand that she was dying. still norma had little time to say her goodbyes. she died ten days later. >> these are really important conversations that should not be waiting the last week of someone's life, between patients, families, doctors, other healthcare providers involved in the care of that patient. >> gawande: there's no natural moment to have these conversations, except when a crises comes, and that's too late. so i began trying to start earlier talking with my patients- and even my dad. i remember my parents visiting. my dad and my mom and i had sat in my living room and i had the conversation, which was, what are the fears that you have, what are the goals that you have, and you know, he cried and my mom cried. and i cried. he wanted to be able to be social. he did not want a situation where if you're quadriplegic you could end up on a ventilator. you know, he said, "let me die if that should happen." i hadn't known he felt that way. this was an incredibly important moment. these priorities became our guidepost for the next few years. and they came from who he was as a person, who he had always been. my dad came from a little farming village in the middle of india. you know, thatched mud huts, no running water, a village of about 5,000 people. his father had 13 children. his mother died from malaria when he was about ten. that was when he decided he wanted to be a doctor. he went to medical school in india. afterwards he was offered a job in a hospital in new york city training to be a surgeon. he met my mom and married her, and they moved to athens, ohio to set up their medical practices and raise a family. there he was part of the community, and that became especially important to him after the cancer. as the tumor slowly progressed we followed his priorities. and they led us, and him, to choose an aggressive operation and then radiation. but eventually paralysis set in, and then our options became chemotherapy. so the oncologist lays out eight or nine different options, and we're swimming in all of it. then he started talking about how, you know, you really should think about taking the chemotherapy, who knows, you could be playing tennis by the end of the summer. i mean that was crazy! it made me very mad, because it was a complete... >> completely not right. yeah. >> gawande: you know, this guy's potentially within weeks to... of being paralyzed. the oncologist was being totally human, and was talking to my dad the way that i had been talking to my patients for ten years. it was holding out a hope that was not a realistic hope in order to get him to take the chemotherapy. i then pushed. we were still in the back of our mind thinking, you know, was there any way to get ten years out of this any more? and she basically was saying no. and we needed to know that. medicine often offers a deal: we will sacrifice your time now for the sake of possible time later. but my father was realizing that that time later was running out. he began really thinking hard about what he would be able to do and what he wanted to do in order to have as good a life as he could with what time he had. i guess the lesson is you can't always count on the doctor to lead the way, sometimes the patient has to do it. when i first learned of jeff shields, he had already gone through three years of treatment for a rare form of lymphoma. chemotherapy hadn't worked. he hadn't given up hope. but he was also recognizing that his odds were diminishing, even as his doctors were offering him more treatment options. >> well my experience has been that oncologists, at least my doctors, are basically optimistic. and they're always looking for a way to push the disease into remission than they are in talking about the longer-term picture of mortality. i spent time talking to genie, my wife, thinking about, at least for me, i want to make a decision. i don't want to linger. >> we've had conversations about all aspects of what the end of his life might look like. and most of all he says "i want to be at the farm." and, you know, hopefully i'm in a position to make sure that happens. we have an appointment that i hope will result in them saying that the disease is lessened. but they might say, "no, it's not under control," and then we're going to start having a conversation about mortality and... because i don't think there are so many more choices for jeff in terms of treatment. (sighs) (knock at door) >> come on in. hey, rob. >> hey, hey jeff. >> hi, rob. >> hi, how we doing? >> good. >> thanks for coming over. >> my pleasure. >> any results on the biopsy? >> yes. the preliminary results do look like graft versus host disease. and that's not necessarily so surprising. we expected that. >> i first met mr. shields about two years ago. at that point he had a bone marrow transplant. and unfortunately about a year after the transplant, he showed signs that his disease was coming back. in addition to that, he has a complication of transplant where the donor cells are actually attacking his body. and unfortunately it's wearing him down. it almost goes without saying but we may have to make a, you know, a new game plan a week from now. >> to feel really crummy or spend the last three or four weeks of my life in the hospital is not very appealing to me. >> i bet not. >> and so when we get to that point, i'll rely on you to make sure we have that conversation. >> right. and it's a group discussion for all of us. >> it sure is. >> gawande: it's always a hard thing, right? how do you know if they're coming towards the end versus changing the therapy again? >> well, i don't think we ever know. >> gawande: right. >> but with jeff, he was a very, very thoughtful fellow. and thoughtful in the sense that he had considered what might happen down the road. and he made it very clear to me that if we thought some therapy might be helpful, might prolong his life with reasonable quality of life, uh, he was happy to go for it. he also made it very clear that if we thought that things were going to go badly, or if things looked like they weren't going to work, he didn't want to pursue therapy just for the sake of pursuing therapy. >> it seems to me there's such a difference in these last few weeks. and we know the lymphoma is growing and-- and sort of rampant. what i'm worried about is could we be coming to a place where it is actually killing you and we don't have the opportunity to really talk with the children and the... >> you mean where i am in, what i consider in hospice-- in other words, end stage-- and we don't have-- i'm going to live for four weeks and we are thinking oh, maybe there are three months. >> yeah. yeah. >> i think we should ask that at our next visit. >> all right. here. go into your benadryl stupor. >> unfortunately your bilirubin is up, but the other liver function tests are a little down. um, i can't put a particularly good spin on that. i don't know how negative a spin to put on that. but i can't put a good spin on that. >> i wanted to clarify something i said. >> yeah. >> i don't want to go back into the hospital. i want to die at home. >> yeah. >> and, uh, that's really my goal. and so i want you, as my doctor, my good friend, to know that. the hospice people will know it. >> yes. >> genie knows it, that's my desire. >> gawande: it's impressive for a patient, and a family, to be so clear about their priorities, like jeff shields was. accepting that life can be shorter than we want is very difficult. it's easy for all of us, patients and doctors, to fall back on looking for what more we can do, regardless of what we might be sacrificing along the way, and that's especially the case with younger patients. and that is where a doctor needs to be especially skilled, i think. >> it's always a challenge how to say it, that this is not working and i have nothing more. i've tried to deliver the bad news in pieces over a period of time. i feel a lot of times they don't absorb all of the information and that's why you have to keep repeating it and, um... >> gawande: you saw that with bill brooks? >> yeah. >> so the mri. there's a little change, unfortunately. um... there's a small area... a new spot. it's not super large, um, but it's there. this is the beginning of the end. i think it's progressing to an extent that we may not be able to do anything to control it. he's one of those few people in whom, you know, if there's something that you could try it's worth trying. rather than just waiting. >> so what do you think about the abbvie? i just saw it on the news yesterday. they just got fda approval for one of their brain tumor medications. >> that drug, we actually have a trial with that drug. i'll look into it. i'll look to see what the status of that is and see if it makes sense for you to get it. um... it's not going to be on a clinical trial for you. if we do it, we'd have to do it as a compassionate use. >> okay. >> and and i wouldn't want to give you something if it would potentially make things worse, so. >> worse. sure. >> but i'll definitely look into that. bill brought up this particular drug, but it is experimental. >> gawande: are you at all worried that he would just have toxicity from the drug without benefit? >> yes and no. at this point i knew that he wasn't going to live for too long without anything. so whether he... at least he felt that he could try. >> gawande: bill was only able to get one dose of the experimental drug because he was getting sicker. the spinal taps were beginning to stop working. the pressure in his head continued to build, and the effects were becoming undeniable. that was when he began to prepare. >> i'm really declining quickly, i need a lot more help, even doing basic, you know, basic walking and things like that. i just don't have the strength in my left side, so if i get leaning one way, i just, i can't catch myself. >> can i flip them? >> yeah. it took me 15 years to collect this. more valuable or more collectable things are, you know, from back years ago. >> is it just this pile here? no, you have more than that. >> no i have more. if i died tomorrow, she's not going to know how to dispose of this properly to get the most bang for her buck. >> want me to just move all these canvas ones? >> well, those are going to be the good ones. >> these are the good ones? >> the canvas ones, yeah. >> oh, okay. >> yeah that one's a good one. i'm just overwhelmed with everything. the mental roller coaster has been the hardest thing to deal with. it's just like, okay, am i dying? am i not? can i function? can i not? you know, and then they're trying to tell you stay positive, keep hoping, keep fighting, and i'm like, i've been doing that for two-and-a- half years. i'm at the end of my ropes as far as that goes. i can't take any more bad news. i'd rather go into the meeting and have her just pull a gun out and shoot me than have to listen to her try and be nice while she's giving me bad news. like i said, i'm a positive person, but i'm-i'm at the end of my ropes with it. i've fought as best i can. >> gawande: accepting death comes with incredibly complex emotions. bill's hopes for more years had turned to weeks. and the question became when to let go of treatments if they're not helping. to accept what dr. nayak and sandra had been conveying about considering hospice. >> i think we need to talk about um what's been going on for the last few days. the fact that you didn't respond to the spinal taps, i wouldn't want to put you through any more spinal taps. (sirens blaring in distance) there's going to be a time when we're not going to be able to deal with the pressure, with the steroids. >> okay. >> we will be able to help with pain and in making you comfortable. >> okay. >> i'm worried that your disease is progressing quickly. we've talked about, you know hospice before. and i think this is the time where we need to discuss a bit more about it. >> well, mary and i have talked many times and my thought again is i'm not afraid to die, but i'm afraid of all the suffering that goes beforehand. so we just... we're trying to find out, you know, when that is going to come to pass just so we can... we can say goodbye to each other. (sniffles) >> maybe we should just pause for a minute, it's so much information. >> you go through this in your head over and over again but you just don't even want to think it's a reality. >> i know. >> i'm sorry. >> it's really hard. >> gawande: it's impressive just being able to be silent for a while. were you deliberately trying to be silent and let... let it happen? >> yeah. i think it's important to pause at the right time... some time. it's a lot of information. >> pleased to see you. hopefully i'm your last bad news for the day. >> at this point it's just making sure he's as comfortable as he can be. um, you know, and that's the most important thing. you know, what's working against him in a way is that he's young and strong. it'll just mean that he'll linger longer. this is it, yeah. it's basically just let him just go peacefully. you know, unless there's another miracle. (sniffles) (sobs) it's okay. but anyway, my guess is that it just depends. it all depends on him, so. yeah, i'm going to go check on him, i just want to make sure he's okay. are you okay? i'm right here, sweetie. i just want you to be comfortable. bill died two days later. (child's indistinct chatter) >> as this home time began to unfold, i began to realize how... how difficult it was, partly because our house was not organized or arranged to comfortably do this. suddenly you have a hospital bed in the middle of your living room. >> then i need you to help me bring my feet up. >> here, malcolm. we're going to help pop pop take his slippers off. can you do that? you want it to be as comfortable and happy a place for him as it can be. and at the same time, it's, you know, it's sort of the elephant in the room. >> have i talked to you at all about my thoughts on dying? >> no. >> is it too hard? okay. let me just tell you this. i'm not afraid of dying. i've had a long and wonderful life. and one of the nice things about being on the farm is that you realize everything dies. there's a cycle of life-- the cows die, the trees die, the grass dies, the fish die, and people die. >> aren't you sad that you're going to be missing out on a lot of things? >> well, i will be. and, um, you know, i had hoped to have another ten or 15 years, but you don't always get what you want. i love you. >> i love you, too. >> see you in a few minutes. >> in those last weeks, you know, as his space narrowed and narrowed to that bed, it grew in terms of the people he was drawing in. i hate to cry. i'm sorry. um, ugh, but that's another one of those paradoxes, you know as your... as your world comes closer and smaller and smaller it becomes bigger and bigger. and he was seeing that. >> the last couple of weeks i've been surrounded by family and friends and it's been terrific. uh, you know, some of the best days of my life, i must say. but then there's a downward trend that's more rapid than i had expected. i've felt great during that time and my body was in rapid decline. since then my mind has been in rapid decline. i get confused. um... so, but i'm still a happy guy. >> gawande: jeff shields' words about his last weeks being his happiest seemed especially profound to me, because they were among his last words. he died just hours afterwards. in medicine when we're up against unfixable problems, we're often unready to accept that they are unfixable. but i learned that it matters to people how their stories come to a close. the questions that we ask one another just as human beings are important. what are your fears and worries for the future? what are your priorities if time becomes short? what are you willing to sacrifice and what are you not willing to sacrifice? my father answered these questions. he entered hospice, four months, as it would turn out before he died. and he was a person, mostly, during that time. he was not a patient. you know my dad skyped with everybody back to his village in india, he had me and my sister come there and be with him, and he remained in control of the priorities that were most important to him. i remember sitting in a chair, reading the newspaper, light coming in the window. my mother and my sister were having a conversation. and then, we realized he wasn't breathing. we waited to see if there would just be one more breath. and there wasn't. my dad made his wishes for what his life would be like to the very end, very clear to us including for what should happen even after the very end. he wanted to be cremated in the traditional indian way. and he wanted his ashes spread on the ganges river. we took his ashes, my sister and my mother and i, to the ancient city of varanasi, one of the oldest cities in the world. with a swami and a boatman taking us out in a dingy, and uh, it was an amazing thing. millions, literally millions of families have brought the ashes of somebody in their family who's died to the ganges. that connection to people going back that many years makes you feel like you're connected to that many years going forward as well. you're just this speck in time. i felt he had brought us there and connected himself to all that was important to him. how is dying ever at all acceptable? how is it ever anything except this awful terrible thing? and the only way it is, is because we as human beings live for something bigger than ourselves. >> go to pbs.org/frontline for more from atul gawande about death and dying. >> what are your fears and worries for the future? what are your priorities if time becomes short? what are you willing to sacrifice and what are you not willing to sacrifice? >> join a special conversation with frontline using the hashtag #whatmattersmost on facebook, youtube, twitter or instagram, and tell us, if you had only limited time left, what would be most important to you? >> ♪ i'm sick and tired of hearing things ♪ from uptight, short-sighted narrow-minded hypocrites ♪ all i want is the truth just gimme some truth ♪ i've had enough of reading things ♪ by neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians ♪ all i want is the truth just gimme some truth... >> frontline is made possible by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. and by the corporation for public broadcasting. major support for frontline is provided by the john d. and catherine t. macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. more information is available at macfound.org. additional support is provided by the park foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. the ford foundation, working with visionaries on the front lines of social change worldwide. at fordfoundation.org. the wyncote foundation. and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from jon and jo ann hagler, and additional support from chris and lisa kaneb. support for "being mortal" is provided by the john and wauna harman foundation. captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org >> for more on this and other frontline programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline. >> frontline's "being mortal" is available on dvd. to order, visit shoppbs.org. or call 1-800-play-pbs. frontline is also available for download on itunes. what if television... ali: i shook up the world! could remember the heroes we honored? 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