You get ready to die the way you get ready for a trip. Start by realizing you don't know the way. Read a few travel guides. Study the language, look at maps, gather equipment. Let yourself imagine what it will be like. Pack your bags. This book is one of those travel guides-a guide to preparing for your own death and the deaths of people close to you. The fact of death is hard to believe. Sallie Tisdale explores our fears and all the ways death and...

There is an unspoken dark side of American medicine--keeping patients alive at all costs. Two thirds of Americans die in healthcare institutions tethered to machines and tubes, even though research indicates that most prefer to die at home in comfort, surrounded by loved ones. The question How do you want to live? must be posed to the seriously ill because they deserve to choose. If doctors explain options--including the choice to forego countless...

"A Yale physician's fascinating and wise exploration of why so many people die poorly and how a medieval bestseller on the art of dying well holds important lessons for today"--

""A practical and compassionate guide to physically, emotionally, and spiritually caring for the dying"--

All of us are entitled to the rewards of a peaceful, pain-free death. This book honors that with true stories about hospice patients and inspiring insights from the author. Becoming Dead Right guides us through the general and "how to" information maze that prepares us for dealing with death. Improving and expanding hospice services will require systemic changes in healthcare institutions, outreach to diverse populations, and funding. With the inclusion...

The authoritative, informative, and practical follow up to BEING MORTAL, on end-of-life care for patients over the age of 65. Most people say they would like to die quietly at home. But overly aggressive medical advice, coupled with an unrealistic sense of invincibility, results in the majority of elderly patients misguidedly dying in institutions while undergoing painful procedures, instead of having the better and more peaceful death they desired....

An exquisitely written, expertly reported memoir and expose; of modern medicine that leads the way to more humane, less invasive end-of-life care based on the author's acclaimed New York Times Magazine piece. This is the story of one daughter's struggle to allow her parents the peaceful, natural deaths they wanted and to investigate the larger forces in medicine that stood in the way. When doctors refused to disable the pacemaker that caused her eighty-four-year-old...

Anna didn't want to die. She wanted to live to see her grand-daughters' weddings. But, it was not to be. It is always tragic to lose a loved one, but it is sheer torture to watch one's partner deteriorate day by day, losing faculties one by one, the use of arms, legs and hands, and eventually the ability to speak. It is awful when a brain ceases to function, memory goes and friends are no longer recognised. It is even worse when someone is aware...

Take My Hand is a welcome, practical guide for the emotional journey of caregiving. The caregiver's twisting and emotional journey is often bittersweet, combining feelings of exhaustion, reflection, love, frustration, delight, denial, connection, and loneliness. Just as they have taken on hand-holding for a loved one who needs multi-faceted support, many caregivers understandably feel overwhelmed and find themselves wishing for someone to guide them....