A Social History of Dying

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Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139461427
Total Pages : 25 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (394 download)

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Book Synopsis A Social History of Dying by : Allan Kellehear

Download or read book A Social History of Dying written by Allan Kellehear and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our experiences of dying have been shaped by ancient ideas about death and social responsibility at the end of life. From Stone Age ideas about dying as otherworld journey to the contemporary Cosmopolitan Age of dying in nursing homes, Allan Kellehear takes the reader on a 2 million year journey of discovery that covers the major challenges we will all eventually face: anticipating, preparing, taming and timing for our eventual deaths. This book, first published in 2007, is a major review of the human and clinical sciences literature about human dying conduct. The historical approach of this book places our recent images of cancer dying and medical care in broader historical, epidemiological and global context. Professor Kellehear argues that we are witnessing a rise in shameful forms of dying. It is not cancer, heart disease or medical science that presents modern dying conduct with its greatest moral tests, but rather poverty, ageing and social exclusion.

Advent of Dying

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Publisher : Minotaur Books
ISBN 13 : 1429993588
Total Pages : 282 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (299 download)

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Book Synopsis Advent of Dying by : Sister Carol Anne O'Marie

Download or read book Advent of Dying written by Sister Carol Anne O'Marie and published by Minotaur Books. This book was released on 2001-11-19 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Readers have come to delight in the murder-solving exploits of septuagenarian Sister Mary Helen and her cohort Sister Eileen, two nuns with a nose for nabbing killers. Publishers Weekly calls the Sister Mary Helen Mysteries "refreshingly different" and a "heady mix of humor and suspense." Once you meet this spry, clever sleuth, you'll want to make a habit of reading her adventures again and again. Timid little Suzanne Barnes was the perfect ecclesiastical secretary: efficient, discreet, self-effacing. So it came as a shock when Suzanne invited Sisters Mary Helen, Eileen and Anne to Ghiradelli Square's Sea Wench Bar to hear her belt out the blues. Sister Mary Helen wondered what secrets lay behind those watery blue eyes. The Sea Wench Suzanne was a revelation: sassy, sexy, dressed to kill. It was her first-and last-performance, punctuated by a silver letter opener in the heart. Who killed the canary? Sister Mary Helen and her faithful band must unearth Suzanne's secrets to solve the murder before all hell breaks loose-again...

Things I've Learned from Dying

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Author :
Publisher : Twelve
ISBN 13 : 1455575232
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (555 download)

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Book Synopsis Things I've Learned from Dying by : David R. Dow

Download or read book Things I've Learned from Dying written by David R. Dow and published by Twelve. This book was released on 2014-01-07 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Critics Circle Award finalist David R. Dow confronts the reality of his work on death row when his father-in-law is diagnosed with lethal melanoma, his beloved Doberman becomes fatally ill, and his young son begins to comprehend the implications of mortality. "Every life is different, but every death is the same. We live with others. We die alone." In his riveting, artfully written memoir The Autobiography of an Execution, David Dow enraptured readers with a searing and frank exploration of his work defending inmates on death row. But when Dow's father-in-law receives his own death sentence in the form of terminal cancer, and his gentle dog Winona suffers acute liver failure, the author is forced to reconcile with death in a far more personal way, both as a son and as a father. Told through the disparate lenses of the legal battles he's spent a career fighting, and the intimate confrontations with death each family faces at home, Things I've Learned From Dyingoffers a poignant and lyrical account of how illness and loss can ravage a family. Full of grace and intelligence, Dow offers readers hope without cliche and reaffirms our basic human needs for acceptance and love by giving voice to the anguish we all face--as parents, as children, as partners, as friends--when our loved ones die tragically, and far too soon.

In My Time of Dying

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691214905
Total Pages : 412 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (912 download)

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Book Synopsis In My Time of Dying by : John Parker

Download or read book In My Time of Dying written by John Parker and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An in-depth look at how mortuary cultures and issues of death and the dead in Africa have developed over four centuries In My Time of Dying is the first detailed history of death and the dead in Africa south of the Sahara. Focusing on a region that is now present-day Ghana, John Parker explores mortuary cultures and the relationship between the living and the dead over a four-hundred-year period spanning the seventeenth to twentieth centuries. Parker considers many questions from the African historical perspective, including why people die and where they go after death, how the dead are buried and mourned to ensure they continue to work for the benefit of the living, and how perceptions and experiences of death and the ends of life have changed over time. From exuberant funeral celebrations encountered by seventeenth-century observers to the brilliantly conceived designer coffins of the late twentieth century, Parker shows that the peoples of Ghana have developed one of the world’s most vibrant cultures of death. He explores the unfolding background of that culture through a diverse range of issues, such as the symbolic power of mortal remains and the dominion of hallowed ancestors, as well as the problem of bad deaths, vile bodies, and vengeful ghosts. Parker reconstructs a vast timeline of death and the dead, from the era of the slave trade to the coming of Christianity and colonial rule to the rise of the modern postcolonial nation. With an array of written and oral sources, In My Time of Dying richly adds to an understanding of how the dead continue to weigh on the shoulders of the living.

The Inevitable Hour

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Publisher : JHU Press
ISBN 13 : 1421409208
Total Pages : 238 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (214 download)

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Book Synopsis The Inevitable Hour by : Emily K. Abel

Download or read book The Inevitable Hour written by Emily K. Abel and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2013-05-01 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changes in health care have dramatically altered the experience of dying in America. At the turn of the twentieth century, medicine’s imperative to cure disease increasingly took priority over the demand to relieve pain and suffering at the end of life. Filled with heartbreaking stories, The Inevitable Hour demonstrates that professional attention and resources gradually were diverted from dying patients. Emily K. Abel challenges three myths about health care and dying in America. First, that medicine has always sought authority over death and dying; second, that medicine superseded the role of families and spirituality at the end of life; and finally, that only with the advent of the high-tech hospital did an institutional death become dehumanized. Abel shows that hospitals resisted accepting dying patients and often worked hard to move them elsewhere. Poor, terminally ill patients, for example, were shipped from Bellevue Hospital in open boats across the East River to Blackwell’s Island, where they died in hovels, mostly without medical care. Some terminal patients were not forced to leave, yet long before the advent of feeding tubes and respirators, dying in a hospital was a profoundly dehumanizing experience. With technological advances, passage of the Social Security Act, and enactment of Medicare and Medicaid, almshouses slowly disappeared and conditions for dying patients improved—though, as Abel argues, the prejudices and approaches of the past are still with us. The problems that plagued nineteenth-century almshouses can be found in many nursing homes today, where residents often receive substandard treatment. A frank portrayal of the medical care of dying people past and present, The Inevitable Hour helps to explain why a movement to restore dignity to the dying arose in the early 1970s and why its goals have been so difficult to achieve.

The Hour of Our Death

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0804152004
Total Pages : 697 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (41 download)

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Book Synopsis The Hour of Our Death by : Philippe Aries

Download or read book The Hour of Our Death written by Philippe Aries and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-11-06 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An “absolutely magnificent” book (The New Republic)—the fruit of almost two decades of study—that traces the changes in Western attitudes toward death and dying from the earliest Christian times to the present day. A truly landmark study, The Hour of Our Death reveals a pattern of gradually developing evolutionary stages in our perceptions of life in relation to death, each stage representing a virtual redefinition of human nature. Starting at the very foundations of Western culture, the eminent historian Phillipe Ariès shows how, from Graeco-Roman times through the first ten centuries of the Common Era, death was too common to be frightening; each life was quietly subordinated to the community, which paid its respects and then moved on. Ariès identifies the first major shift in attitude with the turn of the eleventh century when a sense of individuality began to rise and with it, profound consequences: death no longer meant merely the weakening of community, but rather the destruction of self. Hence the growing fear of the afterlife, new conceptions of the Last Judgment, and the first attempts (by Masses and other rituals) to guarantee a better life in the next world. In the 1500s attention shifted from the demise of the self to that of the loved one (as family supplants community), and by the nineteenth century death comes to be viewed as simply a staging post toward reunion in the hereafter. Finally, Ariès shows why death has become such an unendurable truth in our own century—how it has been nearly banished from our daily lives—and points out what may be done to “re-tame” this secret terror. The richness of Ariès's source material and investigative work is breathtaking. While exploring everything from churches, religious rituals, and graveyards (with their often macabre headstones and monuments), to wills and testaments, love letters, literature, paintings, diaries, town plans, crime and sanitation reports, and grave robbing complaints, Aries ranges across Europe to Russia on the one hand and to England and America on the other. As he sorts out the tangled mysteries of our accumulated terrors and beliefs, we come to understand the history—indeed the pathology—of our intellectual and psychological tensions in the face of death.

The Lost Art of Dying

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Author :
Publisher : HarperCollins
ISBN 13 : 0062932659
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (629 download)

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Book Synopsis The Lost Art of Dying by : L.S. Dugdale

Download or read book The Lost Art of Dying written by L.S. Dugdale and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Columbia University physician comes across a popular medieval text on dying well written after the horror of the Black Plague and discovers ancient wisdom for rethinking death and gaining insight today on how we can learn the lost art of dying well in this wise, clear-eyed book that is as compelling and soulful as Being Mortal, When Breath Becomes Air, and Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. As a specialist in both medical ethics and the treatment of older patients, Dr. L. S. Dugdale knows a great deal about the end of life. Far too many of us die poorly, she argues. Our culture has overly medicalized death: dying is often institutional and sterile, prolonged by unnecessary resuscitations and other intrusive interventions. We are not going gently into that good night—our reliance on modern medicine can actually prolong suffering and strip us of our dignity. Yet our lives do not have to end this way. Centuries ago, in the wake of the Black Plague, a text was published offering advice to help the living prepare for a good death. Written during the late Middle Ages, ars moriendi—The Art of Dying—made clear that to die well, one first had to live well and described what practices best help us prepare. When Dugdale discovered this Medieval book, it was a revelation. Inspired by its holistic approach to the final stage we must all one day face, she draws from this forgotten work, combining its wisdom with the knowledge she has gleaned from her long medical career. The Lost Art of Dying is a twenty-first century ars moriendi, filled with much-needed insight and thoughtful guidance that will change our perceptions. By recovering our sense of finitude, confronting our fears, accepting how our bodies age, developing meaningful rituals, and involving our communities in end-of-life care, we can discover what it means to both live and die well. And like the original ars moriendi, The Lost Art of Dying includes nine black-and-white drawings from artist Michael W. Dugger. Dr. Dugdale offers a hopeful perspective on death and dying as she shows us how to adapt the wisdom from the past to our lives today. The Lost Art of Dying is a vital, affecting book that reconsiders death, death culture, and how we can transform how we live each day, including our last.

Book Girl

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Publisher : NavPress
ISBN 13 : 1496425820
Total Pages : 288 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (964 download)

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Book Synopsis Book Girl by : Sarah Clarkson

Download or read book Book Girl written by Sarah Clarkson and published by NavPress. This book was released on 2018-09-04 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When you hear a riveting story, does it thrill your heart and stir your soul? Do you hunger for truth and goodness? Do you secretly relate to Belle’s delight in the library in Beauty and the Beast? If so, you may be on your way to being a book girl. Books were always Sarah Clarkson’s delight. Raised in the company of the lively Anne of Green Gables, the brave Pevensie children of Narnia, and the wise Austen heroines, she discovered reading early on as a daily gift, a way of encountering the world in all its wonder. But what she came to realize as an adult was just how powerfully books had shaped her as a woman to live a story within that world, to be a lifelong learner, to grasp hope in struggle, and to create and act with courage. She’s convinced that books can do the same for you. Join Sarah in exploring the reading life as a gift and an adventure, one meant to enrich, broaden, and delight you in each season of your life as a woman. In Book Girl, you’ll discover: how reading can strengthen your spiritual life and deepen your faith, why a journey through classic literature might be just what you need (and where to begin), how stories form your sense of identity, how Sarah’s parents raised her to be a reader—and what you can do to cultivate a love of reading in the growing readers around you, and 20+ annotated book lists, including some old favorites and many new discoveries. Whether you’ve long considered yourself a reader or have dreams of becoming one, Book Girl will draw you into the life-giving journey of becoming a woman who reads and lives well.

The Work of the Dead

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691180938
Total Pages : 736 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (911 download)

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Book Synopsis The Work of the Dead by : Thomas W. Laqueur

Download or read book The Work of the Dead written by Thomas W. Laqueur and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-08 with total page 736 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The meaning of our concern for mortal remains—from antiquity through the twentieth century The Greek philosopher Diogenes said that when he died his body should be tossed over the city walls for beasts to scavenge. Why should he or anyone else care what became of his corpse? In The Work of the Dead, acclaimed cultural historian Thomas Laqueur examines why humanity has universally rejected Diogenes's argument. No culture has been indifferent to mortal remains. Even in our supposedly disenchanted scientific age, the dead body still matters—for individuals, communities, and nations. A remarkably ambitious history, The Work of the Dead offers a compelling and richly detailed account of how and why the living have cared for the dead, from antiquity to the twentieth century. The book draws on a vast range of sources—from mortuary archaeology, medical tracts, letters, songs, poems, and novels to painting and landscapes in order to recover the work that the dead do for the living: making human communities that connect the past and the future. Laqueur shows how the churchyard became the dominant resting place of the dead during the Middle Ages and why the cemetery largely supplanted it during the modern period. He traces how and why since the nineteenth century we have come to gather the names of the dead on great lists and memorials and why being buried without a name has become so disturbing. And finally, he tells how modern cremation, begun as a fantasy of stripping death of its history, ultimately failed—and how even the ashes of the victims of the Holocaust have been preserved in culture. A fascinating chronicle of how we shape the dead and are in turn shaped by them, this is a landmark work of cultural history.

The Brief History of the Dead

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Author :
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0375424237
Total Pages : 270 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (754 download)

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Book Synopsis The Brief History of the Dead by : Kevin Brockmeier

Download or read book The Brief History of the Dead written by Kevin Brockmeier and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2006-02-14 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Kevin Brockmeier, one of this generation's most inventive young writers, comes a striking new novel about death, life, and the mysterious place in between. The City is inhabited by those who have departed Earth but are still remembered by the living. They will reside in this afterlife until they are completely forgotten. But the City is shrinking, and the residents clearing out. Some of the holdouts, like Luka Sims, who produces the City’s only newspaper, are wondering what exactly is going on. Others, like Coleman Kinzler, believe it is the beginning of the end. Meanwhile, Laura Byrd is trapped in an Antarctic research station, her supplies are running low, her radio finds only static, and the power is failing. With little choice, Laura sets out across the ice to look for help, but time is running out. Kevin Brockmeier alternates these two storylines to create a lyrical and haunting story about love, loss and the power of memory.

Loneliness of the Dying

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Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN 13 : 1847141218
Total Pages : 103 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (471 download)

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Book Synopsis Loneliness of the Dying by : Norbert Elias

Download or read book Loneliness of the Dying written by Norbert Elias and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2001-09-01 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1985, this is a short meditation by a great old man on people relating to other people who are dying, and the need for all of us to open up.

Death, American Style

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1442222247
Total Pages : 214 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (422 download)

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Book Synopsis Death, American Style by : Lawrence R. Samuel

Download or read book Death, American Style written by Lawrence R. Samuel and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2013-07-05 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DEATH, AMERICAN STYLE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF DYING IN AMERICA is the first comprehensive cultural history to explore America’s uneasy relationship with death over the past century.

Visitors at the End of Life - Finding Meaning and Purpose in Near-Death Phenomena

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780231182140
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (821 download)

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Book Synopsis Visitors at the End of Life - Finding Meaning and Purpose in Near-Death Phenomena by : Allan Kellehear

Download or read book Visitors at the End of Life - Finding Meaning and Purpose in Near-Death Phenomena written by Allan Kellehear and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how, when, and why our dead visit us. Allan Kellehear--a medical sociologist and expert on death, dying, and palliative care--has gathered data and conducted studies on deathbed visions across cultures.

The Inner Life of the Dying Person

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Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231536933
Total Pages : 283 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis The Inner Life of the Dying Person by : Allan Kellehear

Download or read book The Inner Life of the Dying Person written by Allan Kellehear and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-27 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique book recounts the experience of facing one's death solely from the dying person's point of view rather than from the perspective of caregivers, survivors, or rescuers. Such unmediated access challenges assumptions about the emotional and spiritual dimensions of dying, showing readers that—along with suffering, loss, anger, sadness, and fear—we can also feel courage, love, hope, reminiscence, transcendence, transformation, and even happiness as we die. A work that is at once psychological, sociological, and philosophical, this book brings together testimonies of those dying from terminal illness, old age, sudden injury or trauma, acts of war, and the consequences of natural disasters and terrorism. It also includes statements from individuals who are on death row, in death camps, or planning suicide. Each form of dying addressed highlights an important set of emotions and narratives that often eclipses stereotypical renderings of dying and reflects the numerous contexts in which this journey can occur outside of hospitals, nursing homes, and hospices. Chapters focus on common emotional themes linked to dying, expanding and challenging them through first-person accounts and analyses of relevant academic and clinical literature in psycho-oncology, palliative care, gerontology, military history, anthropology, sociology, cultural and religious studies, poetry, and fiction. The result is an all-encompassing investigation into an experience that will eventually include us all and is more surprising and profound than anyone can imagine.

Attending the Dying

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Author :
Publisher : Church Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 13 : 0819225908
Total Pages : 80 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (192 download)

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Book Synopsis Attending the Dying by : Megory Anderson

Download or read book Attending the Dying written by Megory Anderson and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A useful guide to being present and offering comfort to the dying and their families. Megory Anderson was called to a vigil at the bedside of a friend who was dying one night. That experience was so powerful that she began working with others who needed help attending to those who were dying. Today Anderson is the executive director of the Sacred Dying Foundation in San Francisco, and trains others in the art of "vigiling," a way of attending to the needs of the dying. This practical and concise handbook provides a brief overview of what to expect and how to respond to the needs of someone who is dying. Attending the Dying can be used by and for people of any faith perspective, as well as no particular faith. Chaplains, social workers, hospital-care workers, and friends or family of the dying will all find this a helpful companion for preparing themselves to be present to one of life's most sacred transitions.

The Art of Dying

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Author :
Publisher : Vipassana Research Publications
ISBN 13 : 9781681722993
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (229 download)

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Book Synopsis The Art of Dying by : S. N. Goenka

Download or read book The Art of Dying written by S. N. Goenka and published by Vipassana Research Publications. This book was released on 2020 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

And a Time to Die

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Author :
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
ISBN 13 : 0743282523
Total Pages : 415 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (432 download)

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Book Synopsis And a Time to Die by : Sharon Kaufman

Download or read book And a Time to Die written by Sharon Kaufman and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2005-04-19 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most Americans, when pressed, have a vague sense of how they would like to die. They may imagine a quick and painless end or a gentle passing away during sleep. Some may wish for time to prepare and make peace with themselves, their friends, and their families. Others would prefer not to know what's coming, a swift, clean break. Yet all fear that the reality will be painful and prolonged; all fear the loss of control that could accompany dying. That fear is justified. It is also historically unprecedented. In the past thirty years, the advent of medical technology capable of sustaining life without restoring health, the expectation that a critically ill person need not die, and the conviction that medicine should routinely thwart death have significantly changed where, when, and how Americans die and put us all in the position of doing something about death. In a penetrating and revelatory study, medical anthropologist Sharon R. Kaufman examines the powerful center of those changes -- the hospital, where most Americans die today. In the hospital world, the deep, irresolvable tension between the urge to extend life at all costs and the desire to allow "letting go" is rarely acknowledged, yet it underlies everything that happens there among patients, families, and health professionals. Over the course of two years, Kaufman observed and interviewed critically ill patients, their families, doctors, nurses, and other hospital staff at three community hospitals. In...And a Time to Die, her research places us at the heart of that science-driven yet fractured and often irrational world of health care delivery, where empathetic yet frustrated, hard-working yet constrained professionals both respond to and create the anxieties and often inchoate expectations of patients and families, who must make "decisions" they are ill-prepared to make. Filled with actual conversations between patients and doctors, families and hospital staff,...And a Time to Die clearly and carefully exposes the reasons for complicated questions about medical care at the end of life: for example, why "heroic" treatment so often overrides "humane" care; why patients and families are ambivalent about choosing death though they claim to want control; what constitutes quality of life and life itself; and, ultimately, why a "good" death is so elusive. In elegant, compelling prose, Kaufman links the experiences of patients and families, the work of hospital staff, and the ramifications of institutional bureaucracy to show the invisible power of the hospital system itself -- its rules, mandates, and daily activity -- in shaping death and our individual experience of it. ...And a Time to Die is a provocative, illuminating, and necessary read for anyone working in or navigating the health care system today, providing a much-needed road map to the disorienting territory of the hospital, where we all are asked to make life-and-death choices.