000 02647cam a2200277 i 4500
999 _c24388
_d24388
001 57788
010 _a 2013017659
020 _a9781451641974
020 _a1451641974 (hardback)
040 _aDLC
082 0 0 _a616.02/9
100 1 _aButler, Katy,
_d1949-
_959555
245 1 0 _aKnocking on heaven's door :
_bthe path to a better way of death /
_cKaty Butler.
300 _a322 p. :
_bill. ;
_c22 cm.
504 _aIncludes bibliographical references.
520 _a"An exquisitely written, expertly reported memoir and expose; of modern medicine that leads the way to more humane, less invasive end-of-life care based on the author's acclaimed New York Times Magazine piece. This is the story of one daughter's struggle to allow her parents the peaceful, natural deaths they wanted and to investigate the larger forces in medicine that stood in the way. When doctors refused to disable the pacemaker that caused her eighty-four-year-old father's heart to outlive his brain, Katy Butler, an award-winning science writer, embarked on a quest to understand why modern medicine was depriving him of a humane, timely death. After his lingering death, Katy's mother, nearly broken by years of nonstop caregiving, defied her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and insisted on facing death the old-fashioned way: bravely, lucidly, and head on. Against this backdrop of familial love, wrenching moral choices, and redemption, Knocking on Heaven's Door celebrates the inventors of the 1950s who cobbled together lifesaving machines like the pacemaker and it exposes the tangled marriage of technology, medicine, and commerce that gave us a modern way of death: more painful, expensive, and prolonged than ever before. Caring for declining parents is a reality facing millions who may someday tell a doctor: "Let my parent go." A riveting exploration of the forgotten art of dying, Knocking on Heaven's Door empowers readers to create new rites of passage to the "Good Deaths" our ancestors so prized. Like Jessica Mitford's The American Way of Death and How We Die by Sherwin Nuland, it is sure to cause controversy and open minds"--
650 0 _aTerminal care.
_959556
650 0 _aTerminal care
_xDecision making.
_954147
650 0 _aEuthanasia
_xMoral and ethical aspects.
_941788
650 0 _aAdult children of aging parents
_xFamily relationships.
_959557
650 7 _aBIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY / Personal Memoirs.
_959558
650 7 _aMEDICAL / General.
_959559
650 7 _aSELF-HELP / Death, Grief, Bereavement.
_959560
856 _uhttps://uowd.box.com/s/2wheojofyz93fkccd756aqcxnxf35m7e
_zLocation Map
942 _cREGULAR
_2ddc