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Felix Silverstone is a national leader in geriatrics and Bella Silverstone’s husband. Gawande meets Felix when he is 87 years old. Felix and Bella live in a retirement home, and Felix takes care of Bella as she becomes blind and frail. However, when she falls one day and breaks both legs, they are forced to move to a nursing home unit in their residence. Seeing how the staff treats Bella like a patient rather than a person, he has the staff move them back to their home. This becomes crucial for Felix and Bella, because four days after her casts come off, she passes away. He is glad that he was able to restore some control and comfort in the final weeks of Bella’s life.
Felix Silverstone Quotes in Being Mortal
The Being Mortal quotes below are all either spoken by Felix Silverstone or refer to Felix Silverstone. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Chapter 3 Quotes
Their apartment was only a floor away. But somehow that made all the difference. Exactly why can be hard to pinpoint. Felix still ended up hiring an around-the-clock staff of nurses and aides. And the remaining six weeks until the casts could come off were physically exhausting for him. Yet he was relieved. He and Bella felt more control over her life. She was in her own place, in her own bed, with him beside her. And that mattered tremendously to him. Because four days after the casts came off, four days after she’d begun walking again, she died.
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Explanation and Analysis:
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Felix Silverstone Character Timeline in Being Mortal
The timeline below shows where the character Felix Silverstone appears in Being Mortal. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Chapter 2
Gawande meets Felix Silverstone, a national leader in geriatrics for five decades, when the man is 87 years...
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...go on government assistance to afford it. Ultimately, many Americans go to nursing homes, which Felix hopes to avoid. He is most concerned about the changes in his brain, as he...
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What buoys Felix is a sense of purpose. He improves the health care services at his retirement home...
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One evening, Gawande goes to dinner with Felix and Bella. Felix helps Bella sit and orders for her, as she can’t read the...
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Felix has managed his old age well—particularly in finding a skilled geriatrician to help him. While...
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One day Gawande accompanies Felix on a drive to run an errand. Gawande is admittedly nervous to be in the...
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Chapter 3
...of life. People can live and manage a long time, but eventually losses accumulate. For Felix, it isn’t his own problems that accumulate, it is Bella’s. She loses her vision completely,...
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...fluid accumulating. As a result, she becomes totally deaf, severing all communication between her and Felix. Even the simplest things are confusing. Felix doesn’t know what to do, but before they...
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...than a person, dressing her like a rag doll, for example. There are particular ways Felix knows to care for her, but the staff doesn’t learn these ways.
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Felix moves Bella back downstairs, though the staff continues to work in Felix and Bella’s home....
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