The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life
The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of LifeBy: Marilyn Webb 
Lowest New Price: $16.09List Price: $27.00 Average Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 Description:The Good Death is the first full-scale examination of one of today's most complex issues: the profound change in the way Americans think about and confront death. Drawing on more than six years of firsthand research and reporting, noted journalist Marilyn Webb builds her account around intimate portraits of the dying themselves. She explains why some deaths become shockingly difficult--and needlessly painful--and how the struggles over end-of-life decisions can pit patient and family against hospitals, doctors, insurance companies, religious groups, and the law. But there is good news as well. Webb describes many extraordinary programs and individuals who are changing the face of dying. An abundant source of comfort and hope, The Good Death shows how the essential elements of humane--even uplifted--death are available to all of us, if we know what is possible, where to go for help, and how to prepare. Description: Even as Marilyn Webb put the finishing touches on The Good Death, assisted suicide had come before the Supreme Court for legalization. In fact, as long ago as 1990, events had converged that led to cataclysmic changes in how Americans die. One such event was Dr. Jack Kevorkian's first assisted suicide. Since then the nation has struggled with myriad legal, physical, and ethical sides to the issue of assisted suicide. Recent technological and medical breakthroughs have--in a relatively short amount of time--extended the average age of death from 46 to 80 years of age. The lingering, debilitating diseases of old age have become the norm; technology and medicine continue to dazzle, prolonging life without considering the issue of its quality. That search for quality propelled Marilyn Webb, editor in chief of Psychology Today, to travel the country for six years, collecting stories and information that reflect every angle of the subject. She examined the range of care and values in places ranging from tiny hospices to major metropolitan medical centers. She interviewed 300 physicians, nurses, and health care workers, even such luminaries as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Kervorkian himself. She let conflicting views air: theologians versus Christian clerics; those in the Hemlock Society against pro-life conservatives. She sought out compelling, personal stories--the good, the bad, and the ugly--and analyzed the pressing issues that had begun to reshape our thoughts about death, including the legacy of Karen Ann Quinlan. The Good Death can be read straight through or mined for the lessons taught by various aspects of the issue. Whatever your approach, you'll want to spend time with The Good Death, whether relishing or reeling from the stories or just pondering the values that shape the culture of death. Publisher: Bantam Release Date: 1999-02-02 Customer Review: 5 out of 5 Customer Review: 5 out of 5 When I started reading books on dying (Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan, Patricia Kelley; The Grace in Dying by Kathleen Singh), I read books that gave me hope and comfort in dealing with my own mortality. This book made the hair on my neck rise up. It begins by shattering illusions (the ones I'd built up) about having a pain-free, easy death. There are insurance companies, personal opinions, differing agendas of a variety of institutions that come into play. In short, some people have an easier death than others. Webb writes in an easy to read, article style. She begins with a chapter called "Dying Easy", about the nearly beautiful, fairly comfortable death of Judith Hardin, who at 36 dies at home with her husband and children. "Dying Hard," is based on Webb's personal interviews and experiences with the death of Peter Cicione. Cicione died a death more painful than it needed to be, largely due to medical staff's fears that this dying man was misusing morphine, might overdose or use so much medication that the drugs would no longer be effective (not true). In "The Sorcerer's Apprenctice" and "When Death Becomes a Blessing," Webb focuses on the history of medical control of pain, the prolonging of life with new medical techniques and modern pain control through the works of Dr. Kathleen Foley, director of neurology pain service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Foley estimated that 5% of the patients she was seeing were "in unassuageable pain." Webb's conservative estimate offers that "109,500 people a year die with unrelieved suffering." Much of this is due to outdated information, old rules, and misunderstandings about how much medication a dying person in severe pain can and should get. She offers the possibility that terminally ill patients who want to commit suicide or look for assistance in dying might not do this, if their pain could be properly handled. She has chapters about the legal conflicts for families who want comatose relatives off of life-support systems, with detailed information about Karen Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan's cases and the affects on their families long after these women died. "Bearing the Burden" focuses on what happens to the lives of families with a terminally ill member - "The sad secret that many don't want to admit is that care at home, wonderful as it can be in helping a patient to a good death, is hard on families. Home care may allow for those close, intimate, late-night times with the dying family member...but there are also the difficult times: changing diapers, losing sleep or feeling intense anxiety because the patient is in pain or can't breath..." This first half of the book is tough reading, but necessary - for there is still a lot of work to be done to make dying easier. The second half of the book deals with hospice; assisted dying (suicides); spirituality in dying. She closes with 10 common factors 'good deaths' have - 1) open, ongoing communication with doctors, patients, families 2) preservation of the patient's decision-making powers for as long as possible 3) sophisticated pain control 4) limits on excessive treatment (medical interventions, per the patient) 5) focus on preserving the patient's quality of life 6) emotional support 7) financial support 8) family support 9) spiritual support 10) patient isn't abandoned by the medical staff even when curative treatment is no longer required. She also has 10 changes, which she believes need to be made to change the culture of dying from a cold, hospital-set detachment to a family affair. These encompass everything from expanding health insurance to cover needs currently not met, to legalization of assisted suicide. If you have given little thought to some of the darker sides of dying, focusing as I have on the spiritual and more uplifting side, this book offers a lot of food for thought. Well-written, easy to read, disturbing. Even if you have different opinions than Webb has (about assisted suicide, for example), this book is a good read to investigate the other side's information and arguments. Customer Review: 5 out of 5 Customer Review: 5 out of 5 --> Find out more about "The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life" at Amazon.com or Order Now |
|