Dying Well: Peace and Possibilities at the End of Life

Rating:
Summary: touching and enlightening on a dark subject
Review: This book is an opportunity to open an area of thought which we might normally keep tightly closed. It has allowed me to observe and learn about end of life issues before actually going through the experience with loved ones. That day is coming for all of us and this book eases the way into it. There's no need to go blindly; Dr. Byock's book can illuminate the issues ahead. It's amazing!

Rating:
Summary: Comforting the Dying, Enriching the Living
Review: This book is one of those rare works that combines passionate engagement with a universal issue, artful storytelling, and clinical expertise. The author allows each of the patients he describes to bless him, and thereby to bless the reader. Dying, the author argues, is not simply a holding pattern between life and death. It is a vital developmental time that holds infinite possiblities for deepening, learning to love, serving one another both as caregiver and receiver of care, and simply learning to "be" after what often has been a lifetime of mechanistic "doing." Such possibility is created when simple principles of Hospice are honored. Pain must be absolutely controlled. The patient (and the family) must be tenderly companioned. Such care, the author convinces us, is a privilege, a holy time in which human beings gather together in the face of Mystery in all of its agony and joy and wonder and transcendent meaning. We can only create human community, the author suggests, when we are willing to simultaneously look death in the face and to remain open to the gift of healing. I closed the book more alive, more thankful, less fearful, and more curious about the prospect of the adventures ahead.

Rating:
Summary: Comforting the Dying, Enriching the Living
Review: This book is one of those rare works that combines passionate engagement with a universal issue, artful storytelling, and clinical expertise. The author allows each of the patients he describes to bless him, and thereby to bless the reader. Dying, the author argues, is not simply a holding pattern between life and death. It is a vital developmental time that holds infinite possiblities for deepening, learning to love, serving one another both as caregiver and receiver of care, and simply learning to "be" after what often has been a lifetime of mechanistic "doing." Such possibility is created when simple principles of Hospice are honored. Pain must be absolutely controlled. The patient (and the family) must be tenderly companioned. Such care, the author convinces us, is a privilege, a holy time in which human beings gather together in the face of Mystery in all of its agony and joy and wonder and transcendent meaning. We can only create human community, the author suggests, when we are willing to simultaneously look death in the face and to remain open to the gift of healing. I closed the book more alive, more thankful, less fearful, and more curious about the prospect of the adventures ahead.

Rating:
Summary: Novel guidance and support for those preparing for death.
Review: This wonderful book approaches the process of dying using individual case vignets which illustrate the essence of the book: no one need die in pain. Dr. Byock outlines care available to terminal patients, both through hospice and palliative medical options. He addresses the subject with regard to both dying persons and those who love and care for them. One purpose of Dr. Byock's book is stated to be to be an effort to elevate dialogue from that of painful death vs. euthanasia to painful death vs. non-painful death. He shows that, through the specialty of Palliative Medicine, consideration of euthanasia becomes unnecessary. This is the first book I've read (Kubler-Ross, Stephen Levine, etc.) that gives specific information regarding how to assist people in the process of dying by making available physical, emotional and psychic support. Anyone facing death (and aren't we all?) will sleep better knowing that they and they're loved ones can die comfortably with the help of the medical community and hospice. This is a "must have" book for anyone pondering life's end.