Final Acts : : Death, Dying, and the Choices We Make / / ed. by Nan Bauer-Maglin, Donna Perry.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• MitwirkendeR: Barnes, Nancy,; Bingham, June,; Byock, Ira,; Cruikshank, Margaret,; Evans, Sara M.,; Gauthier Cummins, Candace,; Hannon, Natalie R.,; Jumbelic, Mary,; Kiernan, Stephen P.,; Levitan, Jean,; MacGregor, Cherylynn,; Nitschke, Philip,; Oyster, Carol K.,; Perlstein, Susan,; Piercy, Marge,; Pope, Alan,; Robson, Ruthann,; Schwartz, Mimi,; Stewart, Fiona,; Temple, Kathryn,; Tucker, Kathryn L.,
• TeilnehmendeR: Barnes, Nancy.; Bingham, June.; Byock, Ira.; Cruikshank, Margaret.; Evans, Sara.; Gauthier, Candace.; Hannon, Natalie.; Jumbelic, Mary.; Kiernan, Stephen.; Levitan, Jean.; MacGregor, Cherylynn.; Nitschke, Philip.; Oyster, Carol.; Perlstein, Susan.; Piercy, Marge.; Pope, Alan.; Robson, Ruthan.; Schwartz, Mimi.; Stewart, Fiona.; Temple, Kathryn.; Tucker, Kathryn.
• HerausgeberIn: Bauer-Maglin, Nan,; Perry, Donna,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2009]; ©2010
• Year of Publication: 2009
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (344 p.)

Today most people die gradually, from incremental illnesses, rather than from the heart attacks or fast-moving diseases that killed earlier generations. Given this new reality, the essays in Final Acts explore how we can make informed and caring end-of-life choices for ourselves and for those we loveùand what can happen without such planning. Contributors include patients, caretakers, physicians, journalists, lawyers, social workers, educators, hospital administrators, academics, psychologists, and a poet, and among them are ethicists, religious believers, and nonbelievers. Some write moving, personal accounts of "good" or 'bad" deaths; others examine the ethical, social, and political implications of slow dying. Essays consider death from natural causes, suicide, and aid-in-dying (assisted suicide). Writing in a style free of technical jargon, the contributors discuss documents that should be prepared (health proxy, do-not-resuscitate order, living will, power of attorney); decision-making (over medical interventions, life support, hospice and palliative care, aid-in-dying, treatment location, speaking for those who can no longer express their will); and the roles played by religion, custom, family, friends, caretakers, money, the medical establishment, and the government. For those who yearn for some measure of control over death, the essayists in Final Acts, from very different backgrounds and with different personal and professional experiences around death and dying, offer insight and hope.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction -- Part One. Personal Stories -- Notes on My Dying -- Live Longer or Live Better? -- "Life which is ours to know just once" -- Caregiving Beulah: A Relentless Challenge -- E-mails to Family and Friends: Claude and Maxilla-Declining Gently -- Whose Death Is It, Anyway? -- The Family Tree -- Elegy for an Optimist -- Buddhist Reflections on Life and Death: A Personal Memoir -- Death as My Colleague -- Part Two. Perspectives -- The Transformation of Death in America -- Unintended Consequences: Hospice, Hospitals, and the Not-So-Good Death -- The Hospital Ethics Committee: Solving Medical Dilemmas -- Ethical Principles for End-of-Life Decision Making -- Life or Death: Who Gets to Choose? -- Empowering Patients at the End of Life: Law, Advocacy, Policy -- Dying Down Under: From Law Reform to the Peaceful Pill -- Ageism and Late-Life Choices -- Physician-Assisted Suicide: Why Both Sides Are Wrong -- End of days -- About the Editors and Contributors -- Index