One wants to know whether, in the end, her troubles were physical or psychological. But it is a question as impossible to answer as whether a blush i… - Atul Gawande

What tormented Ivan Ilyich most,” Tolstoy writes, “was the deception, the lie, which for some reason they all accepted, that he was not dying but was simply ill, and he only need keep quiet and undergo a treatment and then something very good would result.” Ivan Ilyich has flashes of hope that maybe things will turn around, but as he grows weaker and more emaciated he knows what is happening. He lives in mounting anguish and fear of death. But death is not a subject that his doctors, friends, or family can countenance. That is what causes him his most profound pain.

Modernization did not demote the elderly. It demoted the family.

Tears wet my eyes. I’m a surgeon. I like solving things. But how do I solve
this?