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This test consists of 15 multiple choice questions and 5 short answer questions.

Multiple Choice Questions

1. How does Gawande characterize Felix’ feelings when his wife dies?
(a) Discombobulated.
(b) Dismembered.
(c) Disoriented.
(d) Distraught.

2. What does Gawande say Ilych wanted?
(a) To be remembered.
(b) To be lionized.
(c) To be celebrated.
(d) To be pitied.

3. What is Gawande’s relation to Alice Hobson?
(a) She is his daughter’s piano teacher.
(b) She is his old piano teacher.
(c) She is his wife’s grandmother.
(d) She is his adopted grandmother.

4. According to James Vaupel’s research, how much of your parents’ lifespans determines your own?
(a) 7%.
(b) 42%.
(c) 3%.
(d) 25%.

5. What does Gawande say has increased along with our reluctance to honestly examine the experience of aging and dying?
(a) The sterility family members feel in the face of their loved ones dying.
(b) The indifference caretakers can feel.
(c) The cruelty we inflict on people.
(d) The compassion doctors can show.

6. What does Gawande say is the first part of the brain to shrink with aging?
(a) Parietal lobe.
(b) Frontal lobe.
(c) Temporal lobe.
(d) Occipital lobe.

7. What does Gawande say the nursing homes Wilson looked at were designed for?
(a) Efficiency.
(b) Control.
(c) Warehousing the elderly.
(d) Cost containment.

8. What system did the U.S. join Europe in implementing in 1935?
(a) The New Deal.
(b) Medicaid.
(c) Social Security.
(d) Medicare.

9. What does Gawande say led Keren Wilson to focus on assisted living facilities?
(a) Her father’s dementia.
(b) Her mother’s stroke.
(c) Her own epilepsy.
(d) Her child’s medical needs.

10. What made the Harry Truman Gawande describes a hero in his townspeople’s eyes?
(a) He saved his neighbors from the fallout when Mt. Saint Helens erupted.
(b) He weathered out the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens.
(c) He used being-buried-by-a-volcano as a retirement plan.
(d) He defied the odds and survived a deadly cancer.

11. How does Gawande characterize his exposure to death and the dying as a child?
(a) He had almost no exposure.
(b) He had a grandfather living with him and saw his decline in detail.
(c) He had a period when a lot of his friends’ grandparents and relatives were sick or died in a cluster.
(d) He was surrounded by rural poverty and high mortality.

12. How old was Alice Hobson when she was widowed?
(a) 41.
(b) 72.
(c) 56.
(d) 88.

13. When does Gawande say Lou Sanders became a widower?
(a) At 56.
(b) At 76.
(c) At 81.
(d) At 63.

14. What does Gawande say is the biggest difference between how people age today and how they used to age?
(a) They used to be much more independent.
(b) They used to be cared for in multi-generational systems.
(c) They used to die much earlier.
(d) They used to be much more private.

15. How does Gawande characterize the similarity between nursing homes and prisons?
(a) They both house mostly poor people.
(b) They are both total institutions.
(c) They are both punitive.
(d) They are both state-run.

Short Answer Questions

1. How does Gawande characterize the “newest view” about why we age (32)?

2. Where does Gawande say Lou Sanders had grown up?

3. What arrangement did Felix have to make when he brought Bella back home from the nursing home?

4. How does Gawande characterize family expectations, in regard to caring for elders?

5. What was the default option for poor elderly people in the time of Mabel’s study?

(see the answer keys)

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