What is more certain than death? In the final analysis, of course, nothing is. Eventually we all pass on, whether of disease, injury or simply the ravages of time on our mortal cells. But the line between life and death isn’t as crisply drawn as it once was. More and more often, doctors are yanking clinically dead patients back from the other side, or giving the hopelessly terminal another chance to kick up their heels.

Sanjay Gupta, M.D., a practicing neurosurgeon and associate chief of neurosurgery at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, an assistant professor at Emory University Hospital and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, learned in school to see life and death as black and white. You’re here or you’re gone, period.

But in Cheating Death he presents poignant anecdotes that have helped change his perspective. (Read an excerpt.) Death, Gupta writes, is a continuum, and while life’s course toward the end may seem inevitable, there’s more wiggle room than you might expect. With a better understanding of the body’s own survival mechanisms and a willingness to adjust standard protocol, pioneering doctors can treat what may seem untreatable. Gupta spoke with AARP Bulletin Today about why he advocates a sea change in medical thinking when it comes to defining our final exit.

Q. Your book details mind-boggling survival stories. What stuck with you the most?

A. They’re all amazing stories that have affected me in many ways. The story of skier Anna Bagenholm is almost not believable: Here’s a woman who was literally suffocated and frozen for 90 minutes—her body temperature down to 56 degrees Fahrenheit. She was gone. Now she’s a doctor in the same hospital where she was pronounced dead. During my research, she and patients all over the world who survived death looked me in the eyes and offered me a simple but profound take-home message: “Don’t give up.”

Q. So, has medicine failed us, giving up too soon on patients?

A. No, I’m not trying to indict the medical field—there have been a lot of great gains made in medicine over the years. But the question of when is dead really dead is one we have to work on in the medical community. If we face that it’s a gray area, a lot more lives could be saved.

Q. Take that gray area a step further.

A. I was taught, as most of us doctors were, that there is a clear bright line between life and death. You’re here and then the heart stops and you’re dead. But we now know death is a process, and it is reversible.

Q. What do you mean it’s reversible?

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