Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal is about experiences he learned from while being a doctor. In his final chapter, “Courage,” he discusses the idea of death and how some of his patients and family went into it. As Gawande discusses the stories and emotions he shared with these people, he explores the idea of narrative medicine that Rita Charon discusses. Rita Charon is a physician that practices narrative medicine in her practice. In her Ted Talk, “Honoring the stories of illness,” Charon presents the idea that we, as doctors and caregiver, should act as if the patient is more than their illness. Instead of treating just their physical illness, helping them understand and process it, as well as helping their mental health, are just as important. …show more content…
Charon said that in her practice “What [my] patients paid me to do was to pay exquisite attention to the narratives that they gave me, which were in words, in silences, in facial expressions…in their body, in the tracings and pictures that we have of their body” (Charon). What this means is that Charon goes above and beyond with her treatments and how she listens. She not only treats her patients medically, but emotionally and mentally as well by giving them someone to talk to while they go through a difficult time. With these stories, Charon forms a type of mold that her patients fit into. This mold includes their personality, identity, and health among other things. After the death of Gawande’s patients, he determined that the stories of peoples lives are very important to them; “For human beings, life is meaningful because it is a story. A story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens…in stories, endings matter” (238). Seeing that their stories means so much to the patients makes Gawande treasure them that much more. And since his patients did pass, he now has the opportunity to spread these stories and make it so they are not forgotten. Both Charon and Gawande understand that stories have such in impact on the way people live their