Ebook The Good Death : The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life, by Marilyn Webb

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The Good Death : The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life, by Marilyn Webb

Ebook The Good Death : The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life, by Marilyn Webb

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Amazon.com Review

Even as Marilyn Webb put the finishing touches on The Good Death, assisted suicide had come before the Supreme Court for legalization. In fact, as long ago as 1990, events had converged that led to cataclysmic changes in how Americans die. One such event was Dr. Jack Kevorkian's first assisted suicide. Since then the nation has struggled with myriad legal, physical, and ethical sides to the issue of assisted suicide.Recent technological and medical breakthroughs have--in a relatively short amount of time--extended the average age of death from 46 to 80 years of age. The lingering, debilitating diseases of old age have become the norm; technology and medicine continue to dazzle, prolonging life without considering the issue of its quality. That search for quality propelled Marilyn Webb, editor in chief of Psychology Today, to travel the country for six years, collecting stories and information that reflect every angle of the subject. She examined the range of care and values in places ranging from tiny hospices to major metropolitan medical centers. She interviewed 300 physicians, nurses, and health care workers, even such luminaries as Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Kervorkian himself. She let conflicting views air: theologians versus Christian clerics; those in the Hemlock Society against pro-life conservatives. She sought out compelling, personal stories--the good, the bad, and the ugly--and analyzed the pressing issues that had begun to reshape our thoughts about death, including the legacy of Karen Ann Quinlan.The Good Death can be read straight through or mined for the lessons taught by various aspects of the issue. Whatever your approach, you'll want to spend time with The Good Death, whether relishing or reeling from the stories or just pondering the values that shape the culture of death.

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From Library Journal

On the brink of the 21st century, the American way of death remains shrouded in secrecy. In a highly readable style, Webb, a former editor of Psychology Today, integrates case studies with analytical chapters on the legal, historical, and social aspects of dying. The latest Supreme Court decisions on physician-assisted suicide and the right-to-die movement are covered in this painstakingly researched survey, as are the field's prominent personalities, from Kubler-Ross to Kevorkian. Thorny issues surrounding death and managed care are also considered. Webb's message is clear: The modern way of dying involves excessive emphasis on exotic technology and too little reliance on palliative care. The book is richly textured with personal, international, and cross-cultural suggestions for remedying the imbalance. Important questions are raised in this book, which originated as an article in New York magazine, though the result is sometimes uncomfortable to read, and the author's reforms won't suit every perspective. This substantial overview is recommended for all public libraries.?Antoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., EvansvilleCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product details

Hardcover: 512 pages

Publisher: Bantam; 1 edition (October 1, 1997)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780553095555

ISBN-13: 978-0553095555

ASIN: 0553095552

Product Dimensions:

6.5 x 1.8 x 10 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.5 out of 5 stars

17 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#2,994,894 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Everyone wants a good death; in 21st century America, far too few of us get that. After reading the terrifying outcomes of excessive medical intervention with the normal process of dying, I got my physician's signature on a Do Not Resuscitate form and proudly wear the tag warning well-meaning emergency techs to let me die in peace. Why wouldn't I want life at all costs? This book explains the all-important difference between living and simply postponing death for a short period of time -- at a terrible cost paid in pain and uncontrolled suffering, and leaving survivors financially destitute.The fear of lawsuits has driven the medical community to do "everything" to keep life in even the most broken and damaged bodies -- when you find a pacemaker has just been implanted in a relative or friend with late-stage Alzheimers, you have attorneys and the medical equipment industry to thank. When an elderly ribcage has been crushed by EMTs desperate to restart a dying heart, gratitude goes to the same group of vultures profiting off the grief of survivors whose plea for doctors to "do anything to keep them alive" is often made from ignorance about the difference between a beating heart and the suffering that often comes with it."Life at all costs" is fine for the individuals who make that choice for themselves. But all too often that same philosophy is applied to everyone in the clutches of the medical community. Yes, pain medication can control almost all physical suffering. But if the medical professional responsible for delivering it believes the doctor prescribed an excessive dose, he or she can refuse to administer the needed relief. A 10-hour delay in delivering and installing a morphine pump for a dying cancer patient who can't swallow pills can and often does cause soul-destroying agony. The religions that teach redemption in the next world can only be bought with suffering in this one also contribute to the denial of appropriate pain treatment for everyone, not just those of their faith.But punative legislation directing activities by the Drug Enforcement Administration and fellow law enforcement agencies are the main reason most physicians refuse to appropriately treat the pain experienced by the chronically ill and the dying. No doctor or nurse will risk losing their license to practice (plus huge fines and time in prison) to alleviate someone else's suffering. Many doctors are refusing to accept patients in chronic pain for that reason -- nobody likes watching a person in agony begging for morphine and having to tell them "sorry, but no."Just like taxes, death is guaranteed for everyone, but virtually nobody knows in advance when and how they'll die. Hopefully, The Good Death will give at least some of us a better idea of how to manage the way we go out and reduce our chances of meaningless, needless suffering while bankrupting our families with medical bills in order to have one last, pain-filled week of life.

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Very important information if you have an elderly loved one, or are one yourself.

As a writer and professor of literature who teaches interdisciplinary courses on Death and Dying, I know that Marilyn Webb's THE GOOD DEATH is the most important book in the field. Nothing can match it for research, insight, compassion, courage, integrity, dignity, and its holistic vision of life. I assign Marilyn Webb's THE GOOD DEATH to my students. I gift the book to my family and friends. As I approach the end of my own life, I hold this book to my heart: it comforts me in sorrow, it sustains me in joy, it helps to row me and to steer me, oh yes, across.Robin Metz, author of UNBIDDEN ANGEL, winner of the Rainer Maria Rilke International Poetry Prize

Offering no soft, simple answers, this book gives a troubling look at many different views of dying in America. A necessary read for anyone interested in not just the spiritual side of dying, but the practical, political, difficult aspects of dying.When I started reading books on dying (Final Gifts by Maggie Callanan, Patricia Kelley; The Grace in Dying by Kathleen Singh), I read books that gave me hope and comfort in dealing with my own mortality. This book made the hair on my neck rise up.It begins by shattering illusions (the ones I'd built up) about having a pain-free, easy death. There are insurance companies, personal opinions, differing agendas of a variety of institutions that come into play.In short, some people have an easier death than others. Webb writes in an easy to read, article style. She begins with a chapter called "Dying Easy", about the nearly beautiful, fairly comfortable death of Judith Hardin, who at 36 dies at home with her husband and children."Dying Hard," is based on Webb's personal interviews and experiences with the death of Peter Cicione. Cicione died a death more painful than it needed to be, largely due to medical staff's fears that this dying man was misusing morphine, might overdose or use so much medication that the drugs would no longer be effective (not true).In "The Sorcerer's Apprenctice" and "When Death Becomes a Blessing," Webb focuses on the history of medical control of pain, the prolonging of life with new medical techniques and modern pain control through the works of Dr. Kathleen Foley, director of neurology pain service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Foley estimated that 5% of the patients she was seeing were "in unassuageable pain." Webb's conservative estimate offers that "109,500 people a year die with unrelieved suffering." Much of this is due to outdated information, old rules, and misunderstandings about how much medication a dying person in severe pain can and should get. She offers the possibility that terminally ill patients who want to commit suicide or look for assistance in dying might not do this, if their pain could be properly handled.She has chapters about the legal conflicts for families who want comatose relatives off of life-support systems, with detailed information about Karen Quinlan and Nancy Cruzan's cases and the affects on their families long after these women died."Bearing the Burden" focuses on what happens to the lives of families with a terminally ill member - "The sad secret that many don't want to admit is that care at home, wonderful as it can be in helping a patient to a good death, is hard on families. Home care may allow for those close, intimate, late-night times with the dying family member...but there are also the difficult times: changing diapers, losing sleep or feeling intense anxiety because the patient is in pain or can't breath..."This first half of the book is tough reading, but necessary - for there is still a lot of work to be done to make dying easier. The second half of the book deals with hospice; assisted dying (suicides); spirituality in dying.She closes with 10 common factors 'good deaths' have - 1) open, ongoing communication with doctors, patients, families 2) preservation of the patient's decision-making powers for as long as possible 3) sophisticated pain control 4) limits on excessive treatment (medical interventions, per the patient) 5) focus on preserving the patient's quality of life 6) emotional support 7) financial support 8) family support 9) spiritual support 10) patient isn't abandoned by the medical staff even when curative treatment is no longer required.She also has 10 changes, which she believes need to be made to change the culture of dying from a cold, hospital-set detachment to a family affair. These encompass everything from expanding health insurance to cover needs currently not met, to legalization of assisted suicide.If you have given little thought to some of the darker sides of dying, focusing as I have on the spiritual and more uplifting side, this book offers a lot of food for thought. Well-written, easy to read, disturbing.Even if you have different opinions than Webb has (about assisted suicide, for example), this book is a good read to investigate the other side's information and arguments.

You cannot walk away from this book without a new persepective on how modern issues have affected the death experience. Marilyn Webb not not only brings insight to the reader on how death affects the family and friends, but also the dying. She presents a breadth of knowledge on so many point of views without pushing one or the other, because she knows death is a personal experience.

Marilyn Webb’s The Good Death is practical rather than metaphysical, focusing on the medical and legal obstacles that make it difficult to die well in the modern world, but it belongs on the shelf—two copies on my shelf—along side Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s Death and Dying, Jacques Choron’s, Death in Western Thought, Freud’s Reflections on War and Death, William Ernest Hocking’s The Meaning of Immortality in Human Experience, Nathan Scott’s The Modern Vision of Death, Victor Frankl, From Death Camp to Existentialism, Philip Ariès’s Western Attitudes Toward Death, Ladislaus Boros, The Mystery of Death…

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