Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System

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Macmillan, 14.11.2006 г. - 301 страници
“This country is fairly crowded with doctors, families, and patients—all possessed of good intentions—failing to achieve the simple goal of allowing people to die with dignity and grace.”
In the 1970s, most Americans died swiftly and brutally: of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives and changed the way we die. In Last Rights, Stephen Kiernan reveals the disconnect between how patients want to live the end of life—pain free, functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family and friends—and how the medical system continues to treat the dying—with extreme interventions, at immense cost, and with little regard to pain, human comforts, or even the stated wishes of patients and families. Backed with surveys, interviews, and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life, from the dying and their families to the doctors and nurses who care for them, this book will be for our time what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s books were for a previous generation.

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Съдържание

Last Hours
3
This Is the News
7
A Baby and a Basketball Game
18
A Dog Is Better Than a Pill
23
So Much Potential
47
NOT AN EMERGENCY
49
What Is a Crisis? 555
51
Possible Paths
55
The Economics of Dying
152
The Most Important Time
159
SMELLING THE ROSES
177
Her Wishes Were Totally Ignored
179
The Desire for Control
183
Dreams Coming True
191
The Final Caress
207
We Can Celebrate
216

Still Alive
65
Mysteries of Life
71
Two Visions
72
HEAL THYSELF
75
Doctors Beginnings
77
Take Five Years
82
A Piece of Cake
88
Maybe I Can Make You Laugh
103
Barriers to Change
109
MEDICINE AND LOVE ARE NOT THE SAME THING
125
One Experience
127
Families as Problems
130
No One in Charge
138
A GIFT OF SILVER
221
Lobster Newburg
223
A Bowl of Applesauce
233
Illness As Opportunity
240
THE LESSON OF THE LEAVES
243
The Endless Cycle
245
An Agenda for Improvement
247
Four Final Lessons
271
Sources and Resources
277
Acknowledgments
289
Index
291
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Информация за автора (2006)

Stephen P. Kiernan is a journalist who graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He has been a journalst for over twenty years and won many awards including the Brechner Center's Freedom of Information Award, The Scripps Howard Award for Distinguished Service to the First Amendment, and a George Polk Award. He is also an auhtor of both fiction and nonfiction. His title, The Baker's Secret, made the Best Seller List.

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