Commonwealth Club Of California Podcast

Growing up as an American-born daughter of immigrant parents, Dr. Sunita Puri always tried to live up to her parents’ expectations and the examples they set. While completing medical school at UCSF, a troubling issue seemed to arise. Between her mother’s experiences as an anesthesiologist and her own conversations with her family about their faith, the disconnect between the traditional medical objective of lengthening life at any cost and her family’s spiritual teachings became more and more apparent. It was this tension that ultimately drew her to palliative medicine, a practice that aims not to simply extend life, but to improve its quality, especially in patients living with fatal illnesses. In her new book, Dr. Puri recounts the most instructive—and often heart-wrenching—stories she has experienced in this line of medicine, intertwining them with the childhood memories of her family that have shaped who she is today. The lessons are not black and white but nuanced in ways that medicine often isn’t. When