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Suggested Reading

The following is a list of books that may be helpful as you care for a loved one with a serious illness or to help you through the grieving process.

All Kinds of Love: Experiencing Hospice

Carolyn Jaffe and Carol H. Erhlich

Presents a view of hospice care through the eyes of a long-term hospice nurse.  This title includes stories which are accompanied by discussion of end-of-life issues that arise among families hospice nurse has served.  It is useful for health care and social worker and layperson alike.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1378989

Final Choices – Seeking the Good Death

Michael Vitez

The death of a loved one is never easy to face.  However, the many choices now available to critically ill patients and their families try to make the experience less mysterious and frightening by giving people more control over how and where they will die.  Today’s options include nursing homes, hospice care, and even assisted suicide.

Yet the range of choices can also cause families more pain as they try to make the best decision with the fewest regrets.  In this Pulitzer Prize-winning chronicle, Michael Vitez presents five options and the people who chose them.  The courage and strength of the men and women portrayed in this book will undoubtedly lead readers to think and talk more about their own ideas and decisions regarding death.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/723796

Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying

Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley

Five years after its first publication, with more than 150,000 copies in print, Final Gifts has become a classic.  In this moving and compassionate book, hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years experience tending to the terminally ill.

Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts – of wisdom, faith, and love – that the dying leave for the living to share.

Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56464

The Conversation

Angelo Volandes

There is an unspoken dark side of American medicine keeping patients alive at any price.  Two thirds of Americans die in healthcare institutions tethered to machines and tubes at bankrupting costs, even though research shows that most prefer to die at home in comfort, surrounded by loved ones.

Dr. Angelo E. Volandes believes that a life well lived deserves a good ending.  Through the stories of seven patients and seven very different end-of-life experiences, he demonstrates that what people with a serious illness, who are approaching the end of their lives, need most is not new technologies but one simple thing:  The Conversation.  He argues for a radical re-envisioning of the patient-doctor relationship and offers ways for patients and their families to talk about this difficult issue to ensure that patients will be at the center and in charge of their medical care.

It might be the most important conversation you ever have.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22245549-the-conversation

The Hospice Choice:  In Pursuit of a Peaceful Death

M.E. Lattanzi-Licht, et al

Hospice is the primary system to provide care for the terminally ill and their families. Warm, compassionate, and absolutely practical, this definitive resource from the National Hospice Organization will answer all your questions about hospice care and will show you how to make this comprehensive and flexible system work for you and your family.
The Hospice Choice illustrates the gamut of situations dying people and their families may face and suggests ways to manage them. Throughout is information on the broad range of services hospice can provide:

  • Physicians and Nursing Services: to help with care specifically designed to keep the patient comfortable and at home
  • Counseling Services: to help families and patients sort out their needs and responses
  • Respite Services: to allow caregivers needed breaks
  • Bereavement Counseling: to provide support for surviving family members and significant others for as much as a full year after loss

The Hospice Choice also addresses sensitive issues like methods of payment, issues of ethnicity, the special problems raised by sudden death, and the realities of caregiver exhaustion. It will give you the concrete information, support, and encouragement that will help you make wise, compassionate decisions for yourself and for your loved ones.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1351259

The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying

Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

On Life and Living
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D., is the woman who has transformed the way the world thinks about death and dying. Beginning with the groundbreaking publication of the classic psychological study On Death and Dying and continuing through her many books and her years working with terminally ill children, AIDS patients, and the elderly, Kübler-Ross has brought comfort and understanding to millions coping with their own deaths or the deaths of loved ones. Now, at age seventy-one facing her own death, this world-renowned healer tells the story of her extraordinary life. Having taught the world how to die well, she now offers a lesson on how to live well. Her story is an adventure of the heart — powerful, controversial, inspirational — a fitting legacy of a powerful life.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33938

Tuesdays with Morrie

Mitch Albom

Maybe it was a grandparent, or a teacher, or a colleague. Someone older, patient and wise, who understood you when you were young and searching, helped you see the world as a more profound place, gave you sound advice to help you make your way through it.

For Mitch Albom, that person was Morrie Schwartz, his college professor from nearly twenty years ago.

Maybe, like Mitch, you lost track of this mentor as you made your way, and the insights faded, and the world seemed colder. Wouldn’t you like to see that person again, ask the bigger questions that still haunt you, receive wisdom for your busy life today the way you once did when you were younger?

Mitch Albom had that second chance. He rediscovered Morrie in the last months of the older man’s life. Knowing he was dying, Morrie visited with Mitch in his study every Tuesday, just as they used to back in college. Their rekindled relationship turned into one final “class”: lessons in how to live.

Tuesdays with Morrie is a magical chronicle of their time together, through which Mitch shares Morrie’s lasting gift with the world.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6900