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A Few Months to Live:
Different
Paths to Life's End
by Jana Staton, Roger Shuy & Ira Byock
Georgetown University Press, May 2001
(A participant-observer study of dying people and their caregivers.)
358 pages;
6X9; LC 00-047671
cloth,
ISBN 0-87840-840-1, $70;
paperback,
ISBN 0-87840-841-X, $26.95
A Few Months to Live describes what
dying is like from the perspectives on nine terminally ill individuals and their
caregivers. Documenting a unique study of end-of-life experiences (The Missoula
Demonstration Project) that included
detailed conversations in home care settings, the book focuses on how
participants lived their daily lives, understood their illnesses, coped with
symptoms (especially pain), and searched for meaning or spiritual growth in
their final months of life. The accounts are presented largely in the
participants' own words, illuminating both the medical and non-medical
challenges that arose from the time each learned the "bad news"
through their final days of life and memorial services.
Topics include palliative care, quality of life, financial hardship, grief and
loss, and communications with healthcare personnel.
Reviews
"A minute, unsparing, yet
tender study that gets closer to the thoughts and feelings of the dying (and
those around them) that any comparable research known to me... A very important
book, which must be compared to Sherwin Nuland's How We Die."
Oliver Sacks, author of Awakenings
"A very
important book that is critical reading or anyone interested in end-of-life
care. The authors, using the techniques of quantitative research, have
provided a way for the dying and those who care about them to speak for
themselves about the value of hospice care and how to improve it."
Phyllis R. Silverman, Ph.D., Massachusetts General Hospital,
Harvard Medical School
"A
useful introduction to the realities of hospice care and caregiving, problems of
delivering service... their generous quotations of study participants makes
people's troubles and satisfactions vividly real."
Arthur W. Frank, Ph.D., author of At the Will of he
Body and The Wounded Storyteller
LA Times
August 20,
2001 Reviewer: SHARI
ROAN
Missoulian
May 21, 2001
Reviewer: GINNY
MERRIAM
| Available at your local
bookstore or by writing to: Georgetown University Press PO Box 4866 Baltimore, MD 21211-0866 USA |
In Canada,
please order from: Scholarly Book Services 473 Adelaide Street West, 4th Fl Toronto, ONT M5V 1T1 Tel: 800-847-9736 Fax: 800-220-9895 |
In
the UK,
Europe, and Israel please order from: Georgetown University Press c/o Plymbridge Distributors, Ltd. Estover Road Plymouth, PL6 7PY United Kingdom. Tel: 44(0) 1752 202301 Fax: 44(0) 1752 202333 |
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