That good night : life and medicine in the eleventh hour

Resource Information

The work That good night : life and medicine in the eleventh hour represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in Mid-Continent Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

That good night : life and medicine in the eleventh hour

Title remainder

life and medicine in the eleventh hour

Statement of responsibility

Sunita Puri

Title variation

• Life and medicine in the eleventh hour
• Life & medicine in the eleventh hour

Creator

• Puri, Sunita, 1979-

Author

• Puri, Sunita, 1979-

Subject

• Medicine -- Religious aspects
• New_200
• Palliative treatment
• East Indian American physicians -- Biography
• Puri, Sunita, 1979-
• Women physicians -- United States -- Biography
• Physician and patient
• East Indian American women -- Biography

Genre

• Biography

Language

eng

Summary

A heart-wrenching and provocative memoir about how the essential parts of one young woman's early life--her mother's work as a surgeon and her spiritual practice--led her to become a doctor and to question the premise that medicine exists to prolong life at all costs. Dr. Sunita Puri's parents grew up in urban India, in extreme poverty. Yet they managed not only to reach America, but her mother become a renowned anesthesiologist too. As a young girl, Puri realized that the gulf between her parents' experiences and her own was nearly impossible to bridge, save for two elements: medicine and faith. Puri spent her childhood in nurse's lounges waiting for her mother to exit the OR, and also in deep conversation with her parents about the role of faith in shaping a compassionate life. As a young woman, Puri followed her mother into medicine. But as the years of her training passed, Puri began to question medicine's power. Were patients' lives being saved, or merely prolonged? What did doctors understand when patients use words like "warrior," "survive," "recover"? Eventually, Puri's questions led her to palliative care--a new field, one at work translating the border between medical intervention and quality of life care. By helping patients think through radical medical decisions, Puri balanced the pull of her family's faith and the incessant and sterile push of Western medicine

Biography type

autobiography

Cataloging source

LBSOR/DLC

Dewey number

• 610.92
• B

Index

no index present

Literary form

non fiction

Target audience

adult