The Art of Dying Well
A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life
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4.3 • 20 Ratings
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- $4.99
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
This “comforting…thoughtful” (The Washington Post) guide to maintaining a high quality of life—from resilient old age to the first inklings of a serious illness to the final breath—by the New York Times bestselling author of Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a “roadmap to the end that combines medical, practical, and spiritual guidance” (The Boston Globe).
“A common sense path to define what a ‘good’ death looks like” (USA TODAY), The Art of Dying Well is about living as well as possible for as long as possible and adapting successfully to change. Packed with extraordinarily helpful insights and inspiring true stories, award-winning journalist Katy Butler shows how to thrive in later life (even when coping with a chronic medical condition), how to get the best from our health system, and how to make your own “good death” more likely. Butler explains how to successfully age in place, why to pick a younger doctor and how to have an honest conversation with them, when not to call 911, and how to make your death a sacred rite of passage rather than a medical event. This handbook of preparations—practical, communal, physical, and spiritual—will help you make the most of your remaining time, be it decades, years, or months.
Based on Butler’s experience caring for aging parents, and hundreds of interviews with people who have successfully navigated our fragmented health system and helped their loved ones have good deaths, The Art of Dying Well also draws on the expertise of national leaders in family medicine, palliative care, geriatrics, oncology, and hospice. This “empowering guide clearly outlines the steps necessary to prepare for a beautiful death without fear” (Shelf Awareness).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist Butler offers a straightforward, well-organized, nondepressing guide to managing the run-up to one's inevitable demise. Each chapter features different end-of-life related themes and exemplary real-world anecdotes of how people cope with different age-related difficulties, with an emphasis on the mental as well as physical aspects of coping with old age and the associated infirmities. Butler's advice is commonsensical without being platitudinous or folksy. One point she particularly stresses is the wisdom of staying away from hospitals when possible. She uses vivid terms to illustrate her points, such as "House of Cards" to refer to a fragile state of health, "common in people in their nineties or in the mid to later stages of dementia." No doubt to the delight of nonagenarians everywhere, Butler's advice to them is not cautionary but rather to indulge in pleasurable activities as much as possible: what she calls "enjoying your red velvet cake." Free of platitudes, Butler's voice makes the most intimidating of processes that of dying come across as approachable. Her reasonable, down-to-earth tone makes for an effective preparatory guide to the permanent holiday upon which everyone eventually embarks.
Customer Reviews
The Art of Dying Well
Overall I wholeheartedly agree with the concept and main purpose of this book. My father was recently diagnosed with an aggressive form of ALS and I was looking for something to help me navigate our remaining time and help me understand what he is needing and wanting from me and our family on a mental, spiritual and emotional basis in order to “die well,” and I feel like this author had that intention among others. However, as a nurse, I disagree with the execution of that intent. With a background in emergency and critical care, the picture she paints of CPR, drawn out illnesses and repeated visits to the ER is accurate and one I wish more people knew about. However there are many nuances to medicine and all the treatments available (or lack thereof), and I feel like she paints it very black and white. There is a lot of middle ground that when paired with the right practitioner can be used for comfort, and ease of suffering, and even choosing the death you want while avoiding debilitating but non-lethal infections, diseases, etc. There are words and statements that are just frankly wrong and not the usual practice, as well as the fact that quite a lot of what she recommends is not an option that is financially feasible for a large part of our elderly population, especially after a chronic or major illness. I love the idea of this book and think it can be used to prompt necessary conversations and give people pause before blindly following our current health care model, but I feel it would have been more successful had she focused more on the content she knew more about and less on actual medical advice that should come from a caring and knowledgeable provider who knows you and your goals personally.