Pacemakers: My father's broken heart

Not my own father's, but the woman who wrote this piece: Katy Butler.
It's very well-written, for one thing; but it's also compelling because it details the dilemmas inherent in medical advances. She admits that, on par, all our advances have been good: Even weighing the skyrocketing costs, kickbacks and insurance problems. But in her father's case, not so much. His heart was fixed by a pacemaker but still, it couldn't help his otherwise wasted body and mind. He was in his 80s.
Another dilemma, which reminds me that medicine--like life--is always contextual: We had a 40-something-year-old family member die of an inoperable brain tumor about two years ago. He took all the treatments they could throw at him. Another family remember remarked: "I wouldn't have taken all that treatment." But I reminded her that he had a young family. No, the treatment didn't ultimately cure him. They knew, without a miracle, it wouldn't. But he had two years he might not have gotten otherwise.
A chosen path is always clear in hindsight. If the pacemaker of Katy Butler's father had turned his life around, the article would be different. As the story goes, his experience allowed her aged mother to choose a different path.
Medicine: An art, a mystery.