At the End of Life, Karen Wolk Feinstein
At the End of Life, Karen Wolk Feinstein
List: $24.99 | Sale: $17.50
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At the End of Life
True Stories About How We Die

Author: Karen Wolk Feinstein, Francine Prose, Lee Gutkind

Narrator: Kitty Hendrix, Al Kessel

Unabridged: 10 hr 47 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 12/25/2018


Synopsis

What should medicine do when it can't save your life?

The modern healthcare system has become proficient at staving off death with aggressive interventions. And yet, eventually everyone dies—and although most Americans say they would prefer to die peacefully at home, more than half of all deaths take place in hospitals or health care facilities.

At the End of Life—the latest collaborative book project between the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation—tackles this conundrum head on. Featuring twenty-two compelling personal-medical narratives, the collection explores death, dying, and palliative care, and highlights current features, flaws, and advances in the healthcare system.

Here, a poet and former hospice worker reflects on death's mysteries; a son wanders the halls of his mother's nursing home, lost in the small absurdities of the place; a grief counselor struggles with losing his own grandfather; a medical intern traces the origins and meaning of time; a mother anguishes over her decision to turn off her daughter's life support and allow her organs to be harvested; and a nurse remembers many of her former patients.

These original, compelling personal narratives reveal the inner workings of hospitals, homes, and hospices where patients, their doctors and their loved ones all battle to hang on—and to let go.

Reviews

Goodreads review by David on June 26, 2012

Reading these true stories taught me things I didn't know and reminded me of details I have never articulated or read about before. Anyone concerned about how the dying and their caregivers participate in their healthcare choices will find this book enlightening as well as informative. The quality o......more

Goodreads review by erin on August 02, 2021

woof! good, hard read!......more

Goodreads review by David on June 01, 2013

I have spent most of fifty years as a Christian pastor, involved in the lives of people from birth to death and through some of the most troubling times in between. This collection of essays is a tribute to the dialogue that has been going on in the medical profession, and ordinary people since Dr.......more

Goodreads review by April on February 14, 2013

If you, or a loved one is ever going to die, you should read this.......more

Goodreads review by Leslie on January 07, 2017

I find this book difficult to review for several completely personal reasons, but I will take a stab at it nonetheless. First, I discovered Lee Gutkind by accident. One issue of "Creative Nonfiction" was on Southern Sin - a concept so intriguing I had to impulse purchase it in the Whole Foods checkou......more