Your Life Depends on It by Talya Miron-Shatz

Author:Talya Miron-Shatz [Miron-Shatz,, Talya PhD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Basic Books
Published: 2021-09-28T00:00:00+00:00

Clint didn’t have an appointed fiduciary. He could not defer choice. He had to choose for himself, and there was no clear winner among his options. Waiting meant that Clint wouldn’t undergo a procedure, but getting a stent meant he’d be taking care of the problem with only a minimal amount of risk. Ultimately what mattered was the ability to make an active choice with a sense of purpose, and that was what the stent offered. Taking a wait-and-see position felt like too passive an option.

A few days later, Clint was lying in the catheter room in preparation for the stent. He was fully conscious, under local anesthesia, emboldened by having chosen well. A tube was going from his groin to his heart, spraying radioactive material and tracing the flow of blood through his arteries. In what would have once been science fiction but is nowadays common practice, Clint was gazing at a screen that displayed the inside of his heart. His surgeon, an interventionist cardiologist, was gazing at it too, pensively. “You know,” he told Clint, “the artery we were going to put the stent in, it’s half clogged, but it’s also half open.” A profound observation suitable for a philosophy class.

“What does that mean?” Clint inquired.

“I propose we put a stent in another artery, one that is almost completely clogged. Here, see?” The surgeon pointed. Squinting at the screen, Clint agreed, getting that decision out of the way.

“OK,” the doctor said, “but which stent should I use?”

How should Clint know? Was he really supposed to keep making these specialized choices—choices his doctor went to medical school to be able to understand? Indeed, he was. “There are two kinds,” the doctor went on. “One that’s just a stent, and one that is coated with slow-release medication. Which one do you prefer?”

Movement is restricted when you have a tube coming up your groin all the way to your heart. Still, Clint managed a full head turn and stared at his surgeon in disbelief. Panic was sinking in.

Deliberating over what to choose, along with the actual act of choosing, is depleting. Depleted people are either passive or impulsive. They don’t engage in careful deliberation. They use mental shortcuts.11 Clint was feeling depleted, with a capital D.

Clint’s doctor could have anticipated this predicament. The doctor probably knew ahead of time that such decisions might need to be made. The doctor could—and should—have presented the choices to Clint in advance, giving him the opportunity—and genuine ability—to contemplate them under less compromising circumstances.

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