Feb. 10, 2015—Genie Shields, an Admiral at the Lake resident, and her husband, the late Geoffrey B. Shields, figure prominently in a new FRONTLINE documentary on death and dying slated for broadcast tonight (Feb. 10) on PBS-TV stations nationwide.
Two years in the making and based on renowned surgeon and New Yorker writer Atul Gawande’s best-selling book, Being Mortal, the documentary by the same name is a provocative, powerful, and deeply personal look at how and why, in Gawande’s words, “medicine fails the people it’s supposed to help” at the end of life.
Genie Shields says that Tom Jennings—the documentary’s producer, cowriter and director—started filming while Jeff Shields was still receiving active treatment for mantel cell lymphoma, a rare form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
“Tom tried to pin down our thinking about Jeff’s decision to shift from active treatment of the disease to palliative care, or treatment purely for comfort,” Genie says. “It was empowering for Jeff, and it proved to be a wonderful thing because it enabled us to put living above the fact that he was dying.”
Death is something we will all one day face. So why is it so hard for doctors to talk about dying with their patients? And how can the medical profession better help people navigate the final chapters of their lives with confidence, direction and purpose?
“We all hope to make careful and thoughtful choices at the end of life, but we tend to push a person who is dying into a hospital to buy days or a few more weeks of life,” Genie says. “It’s a wonderful epiphany to realize that you will live better when you are dying if are able to live with the people you love and have your dying be a part of living.”
Jeff Shields, who was Dean and President of Vermont Law School from 2004 to 2012 and a past Chairman of Ziegler Companies, was ill for three and a half years before he died at age 68 on Aug. 2, 2014.
“I would like people to be able to see this film because what Jeff did and how he lived as he died was courageous,” Genie Shields says. “The message of this film is a good one for everyone…. It demystifies death and makes it less frightening.”
Watch online for free at frontline.org