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What should medicine do when it can’t save your life? The modern healthcare system has become proficient at staving off death with aggressive interventions. And yet, eventually everyone dies—and although most Americans say they would prefer to die peacefully at home, more than half of all deaths take place in hospitals or health care facilities. At the End of Life—the latest collaborative book project between the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation—tackles this conundrum head on. Featuring twenty-two compelling personal-medical narratives, the collection explores death, dying and palliative care, and highlights current features, flaws and advances in the healthcare system. Here, a poet and former hospice worker reflects on death’s mysteries; a son wanders the halls of his mother’s nursing home, lost in the small absurdities of the place; a grief counselor struggles with losing his own grandfather; a medical intern traces the origins and meaning of time; a mother anguishes over her decision to turn off her daughter’s life support and allow her organs to be harvested; and a nurse remembers many of her former patients. These original, compelling personal narratives reveal the inner workings of hospitals, homes and hospices where patients, their doctors and their loved ones all battle to hang on—and to let go.
The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears. Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients' stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity's transcendence. Kerr's book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure. Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine's and humanity's greatest mystery.
A collection of 22 personal narratives explores what should be done in the health-care system with regards to death, dying and palliative care. Edited by the author of Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ Transplantation. Original.
Drawn from her decades of experience as a hospice nurse, Trudy Harris shares stories that offer an incredible glimpse at what lies beyond this world--ethereal music, colors that did not exist on earth, angels, and loved ones who have gone on before. She has been with hundreds of patients as they took their last breaths and knows the kinds of questions that both the dying and their loved ones ask: What happens when we die? What should I say to a loved one who is dying? How can I make a dying friend feel safe? The stories she shares will bring the reader comfort and peace even amidst pain. Tender, heartbreaking, and eye-opening, this expanded edition of the New York Times bestseller offers more incredible windows into the world beyond and life after death.
Revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide with translations in 29 languages. After too many years of unfulfilling work, Bronnie Ware began searching for a job with heart. Despite having no formal qualifications or previous experience in the field, she found herself working in palliative care. During the time she spent tending to those who were dying, Bronnie's life was transformed. Later, she wrote an Internet blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had cared for had expressed. The post gained so much momentum that it was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. At the request of many, Bronnie subsequently wrote a book, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying, to share her story. Bronnie has had a colourful and diverse life. By applying the lessons of those nearing their death to her own life, she developed an understanding that it is possible for everyone, if we make the right choices, to die with peace of mind. In this revised edition of the best-selling memoir that has been read by over a million people worldwide, with translations in 29 languages, Bronnie expresses how significant these regrets are and how we can positively address these issues while we still have the time. The Top Five Regrets of the Dying gives hope for a better world. It is a courageous, life-changing book that will leave you feeling more compassionate and inspired to live the life you are truly here to live.
End-of-life experiences are often viewed in terms of only one perspective such as medicine. In this volume, a variety of end-of life experiences are presented and each case is analyzed from a variety of disciplinary perspectives. These range across a broad array of the helping professions, and disciplines such as information, law and the social sciences. The book provides a variety of narratives about end-of-life experiences contributed by members of the Wayne State University End-of-Life Interdisciplinary Project. Each of the narratives is then analyzed from several different disciplinary perspectives. These analyzes illustrate how specific end-of-life narratives can be viewed from different dimensions and helps students, researchers and practitioners see the important and varied meanings that end-of-life experiences have at the level of the individual, the family, and the community. The narratives include end-of-life experiences of individuals from a number of diverse backgrounds.
With humor, candor, and inspiring anecdotes, this book about hospice patients and families "telling their stories" gifts us with the wisdom of those who have lived full lives.
End of Life Stories: Tips and Tools for the Soul’s Journey Home is an extraordinary book designed to ease people’s suffering in the face of death. Here, anxious loved ones of individuals who are at the end of their lives will find comfort, wisdom and acceptance through the stories of someone who has borne repeated witness to this often agonizing scene. There aren’t many things more terrifying than having to stare down the inevitability of death. More than fear, though, is the tangle of other emotions that can crowd this painful phase: guilt, anger, excruciating despair. Author Cindy Bertrand Larson, who has long worked in palliative care, seeks to mitigate these complex feelings for those who are suffering them, to deliver a sense of peace and fulfillment, and to help these troubled souls find resolution with dangling questions and unresolved issues. Though different cultures have different approaches to dying and death, there are some universal truths around achieving a so-called “good death.” In these instances, these people’s transcendence to another place made them better. And those who traveled with them on their sacred journey are similarly blessed with the same sense of enlightenment and peace. Here is a truly special book that reminds us that we can choose to let death conquer and consume us, or we can choose to let death uplift us, to allow it to teach and transform us, to make us more compassionate souls.
As anyone who has dealt with the dying will attest, it is, in fact, dealing with death these many years that has taught me the preciousness of life. Finding herself in a time of restlessness and transition in her own life, the author looks for inspiration from the Hospice patients she had been privileged to work with for the past 16 years, remembering the stories they had shared with her about what life had meant to them. What were they proud of? What were their regrets? What were the ingredients that went into someone's sense that they had had a very full life? How did the families left behind cope with the loss? She soon found that the Stories were rich and varied, and offered much wisdom about life, even, or maybe especially from, the children who had lost people close to them. It can be a real wake-up call to discover that, for the most part, we die as we've lived. Adding poignant quotes and poetry, the surprising humor that people could find in their situations, as well as her own personal experiences, this book is about the insights and renewed enthusiasm for life that she gained, from 2-year-olds to 95-year-olds, about living life to the fullest. What came up again and again is that it is the Love we leave behind that is all that matters. It is not so much what we do, as how we do it. She includes suggestions for helping children to deal with loss, part of what her own work at Hospice entailed. Consequently we are invited to re-examine our own stories, to change what no longer satisfies us, and to rekindle our own goals and dreams.
Dr. Lerma has devoted his career to compiling anecdotal and scientific research on pre-death hallucinations from countless terminally ill patients. This groundbreaking book shares 16 inspirational stories of children and adults confronting their deaths through the comforting visions of divine beings.