NonfictionLarge Print EditionOffers realistic yet compassionate answers to the hard questions asked by dying patients, their families, and a society unwilling to accept that all life eventually comes to an end. starred, Library JournalNobody should have to die in pain. Nobody should have to die alone. This is Ira Byocks dream and he is dedicating his life to making it come true. The director of a hospice and a prominent spokesperson for the hospice movement, Dr. Byock shows us that much important emotional work can be accomplished in the final months, weeks, and even days of life. Dying Well brings us into the homes of terminal patients, providing a blueprint that shows us how to deal with doctors, talk to friends and relatives and most importantly, how to make the end of life as meaningful and precious as the beginning.

Dying Well: The Prospect for Growth at the End of Life

Self-Help

Byock, Ira

Death & Grief

Thorndike Pr

A study based on detailed conversations with nine terminally ill people and their caretakers, focusing on how participants lived their daily lives, understood their illnesses, coped with pain and other symptoms, and searched for meaning or spiritual growth in the last months of life. The authors believe that informal caregiving by relatives and close friends is an enormous and often invisible resource that deserves close public attention. They identify how families, professionals and communities can respond to challenges of terminal illness such as palliative care, quality of life, financial hardship, grief, and communications with medical personnel. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

A Few Months to Live: Different Paths to Life's End

Shuy, Roger W.

Staton, Jana

Parenting & Relationships

Georgetown Univ Pr

A Few Months to Live describes what dying is like from the perspectives of nine terminally ill individuals and their caregivers. Documenting a unique study of end-of-life experiences that included detailed conversations in home care settings, the book focuses on how participants lived their daily lives, understood their illnesses, coped with symptoms-especially pain-and searched for meaning or spiritual growth in their final months of life. The accounts are presented largely in the participants' own words, illuminating both the medical and non-medical challenges that arose from the time each learned the "bad news" through their final days of life and memorial services. Describing the nationwide crisis that surrounds end-of-life care, the authors contend that informal caregiving by relatives and close friends is an enormous and too-often invisible resource that deserves close and public attention. By incorporating not only the ill person's but also the family's perspective, they portray the nine participants in the contexts of their daily lives and relationships rather than simply as patients. Addressing such issues as palliative care, quality of life, financial hardship, grief and loss, and communications with medical personnel, the authors identify how families, professionals, and communities can respond to the challenges of terminal illness and the need to confront life's end.

A Few Months to Live: Different Paths to Life's End (Not In A Series)

Georgetown University Press

The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life

A palliative care doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial ethical issues of our time on his quest to transform care through the end of life. It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Statistics show that the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home, yet many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to "fight disease and illness at all cost."
Dr. Ira Byock, one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country, argues that end-of-life care is among the biggest national crises facing us today. In addressing the crisis, politics has trumped reason. Dr. Byock explains that to ensure the best possible care for those we love-and eventually ourselves- we must not only remake our healthcare system, we must also move past our cultural aversion to talking about death and acknowledge the fact of mortality once and for all.
Dr. Byock describes what palliative care really is, and-with a doctor's compassion and insight-puts a human face on the issues by telling richly moving, heart-wrenching, and uplifting stories of real people during the most difficult moments in their lives. Byock takes us inside his busy, cutting-edge academic medical center to show what the best care at the end of life can look like and how doctors and nurses can profoundly shape the way families experience loss.
Like books by Atul Gawande and Jerome Groopman, The Best Care Possible is a compelling meditation on medicine and ethics told through page-turning, life or death medical drama. It is passionate and timely, and it has the power to lead a new kind of national conversation.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Avery

A doctor on the front lines of hospital care illuminates one of the most important and controversial social issues of our time. It is harder to die in this country than ever before. Though the vast majority of Americans would prefer to die at home—which hospice care provides—many of us spend our last days fearful and in pain in a healthcare system ruled by high-tech procedures and a philosophy to “fight disease and illness at all cost.” Dr. Ira Byock, one of the foremost palliative-care physicians in the country, argues that how we die represents a national crisis today. To ensure the best possible elder care, Dr. Byock explains we must not only remake our healthcare system but also move beyond our cultural aversion to thinking about death. The Best Care Possible is a compelling meditation on medicine and ethics told through page-turning life-or-death medical drama. It has the power to lead a new national conversation.

Reference

Penguin Publishing Group

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Byock, Ira. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Byock, Ira

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Byock, Ira. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Dying Well: The Prospect for Growth at the End of Life

A Few Months to Live: Different Paths to Life's End

A Few Months to Live: Different Paths to Life's End (Not In A Series)

The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life

The Best Care Possible: A Physician's Quest to Transform Care Through the End of Life