"How Doctors Die" By Ken Murray

       Ken Murray wrote "How Doctors Die" in order contrast the extent to which doctors go to keep their patients alive with the lack of excessive treatment doctors themselves have when they are about to die. This informative essay goes deeply into the paradox of doctors, patients, and the system. For example, he wrote about his friend Charlie, who was an orthopedist who found a lump in his stomach. When he visited a surgeon, he found that he had pancreatic cancer. Instead of investing his time and money on an expensive and tedious treatment, he "went home the next day, closed his practice, and never set foot in a hospital again." He goes on by underlining that doctors are most likely reluctant to use their procedures on themselves because they know the limits of medicine. When bringing up the act of "futile care," which is when doctors do as much as they can to keep a patient alive, he writes, "All of this occurs... at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist." Murray wrote this essay to show the irony of the fact that doctors do not want to inflict futile care on themselves.
     Murray is a retired clinical assistant professor at the University of Southern California who uses his personal experiences in his writing. This brings out both a pathetic and ethical appeal because it brings his emotions into play and it shows his audience that he knows what he is talking about. He wrote about his cousin, Torch, who had lung cancer that had spread to his brain. When hearing about the aggressive treatment option that would keep him alive for about four more months, Torch "decided against any treatment and simply took pills for brain swelling." He then moved in with Murray and they spent the next eight months doing what he enjoyed before he passed away peacefully in his sleep. This supports Murray's opinion on the contrast between futile care and no treatment because it shows that when people have no treatment, they end up living a longer and happier couple of last days.

No Code

Some serious patients get stamps saying "No Code" or "Do Not Resuscitate" in order to tell physicians to not perform CPR on them. Murray writes, "I have even seen it as a tattoo."

(Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3801624/Gran-has-tattoos-ordering-doctors-not-to-save-her-life.html)