Final Acts: Death, Dying, and the Choices We Make
Today most people die gradually, from incremental illnesses, rather than from the heart attacks or fast-moving diseases that killed earlier generations. Given this new reality, the essays in Final Acts explore how we can make informed and caring end-of-life choices for ourselves and for those we loveùand what can happen without such planning.\ Contributors include patients, caretakers, physicians, journalists, lawyers, social workers, educators, hospital administrators, academics,...
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For those who yearn for some measure of control over death Final Acts, offers insight and hope. Writing in a style free of technical jargon, the contributors discuss documents that should be prepared (health proxy, do-not-resuscitate order, living will, power of attorney); decision-making (over medical interventions, life support, hospice and palliative care, aid-in-dying, treatment location, speaking for those who can no longer express their will); and the roles played by religion, custom, family, friends, caretakers, money, the medical establishment, and the government.
Preface viiIntroduction 1Part 1 Personal Stories 13Notes on My Dying Ruthann Robson 19Live Longer or Live Better? June Bingham 29"Life which is ours to know just once" Nancy Barnes 33Caregiving Beulah: A Relentless Challenge Susan Perlstein 55E-mails to Family and Friends: Claude and Maxilla-Declining Gently Sara M. Evans 67Whose Death is it, Anyway? Carol K. Oyster 91The Family Tree Jean Levitan 111Elegy for an Optimist Mimi Schwartz 123Buddhist Reflections on Life and Death: A Personal Memoir Alan Pope 126Death as My Colleague Mary Jumbelic 139Part 2 Perspectives 149The Transformation of Death in America Stephen P. Kiernan 163Unintended Consequences: Hospice, Hospitals, and the Not-So-Good Death Kathryn Temple 183The Hospital Ethics Committee: Solving Medical Dilemmas Natalie R. Hannon 204Ethical Principles for End-of-Life Decision Making Candace Cummins Gauthler 220Life or Death: Who Gets to Choose? Cherylynn MacGregor 238Empowering Patients at the End of Life: Law, Advocacy, Policy Kathryn L. Tucker 252Dying Down Under: From Law Reform to the Peaceful Pill Philip Nitschke Fiona Stewart 268Ageism and Late-Life Choices Margaret Crufkshank 288Physician-Assisted Suicide: Why Both Sides Are Wrong Ira Byock 301End of days Marge Piercy 312About the Editors and Contributors 315Index 321
\ The Gerontologist"Final Acts provides the reader with persuasive and enlightening views on the controversial complex issues that are illustrated in the personal stories. It is a collection of moving stories and compelling essays."\ \ \ \ \ \ Transition Network Newsletter"If there's one profound lesson to be learned from Final Acts, it is that most of us are woefully uninformed and unprepared to make wise end-of-life choices. A good place to begin is by reading this book."\ — Eleanor Foa Dienstag\ \ \ \ Global Action on Aging"An insightful, complex, and pragmatic 'how-to' guide for dying in the Western world. Final Acts a is strong, well-composed, and balanced tool kit to help us all not only change our system to better maintain the integrity of the dying, but to enter into the end of life with confidence and control."\ \ \ \ \ Transition Network Newsletter"If there's one profound lesson to be learned from Final Acts, it is that most of us are woefully uninformed and unprepared to make wise end-of-life choices. A good place to begin is by reading this book."\ \ \ \ \ President, Compassion & Choices"The essays in Final Acts offer all manner of paths, exploring a new relationship with death. Wise and gentle guides, Bauer-Maglin and Perry reveal meaning and purpose in the journey."\ \
