Download or read book Visitors at the End of Life Finding Meaning and Purpose in Near Death Phenomena written by Allan Kellehear and published by . This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about how, when, and why our dead visit us. Allan Kellehear--a medical sociologist and expert on death, dying, and palliative care--has gathered data and conducted studies on deathbed visions across cultures.
Download or read book Visitors at the End of Life written by Allan Kellehear and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 129 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About 30 percent of hospice patients report a “visitation” by someone who is not there, a phenomenon known in end-of-life care as a deathbed vision. These visions can be of dead friends or family members and occur on average three days before death. Strikingly, individuals from wildly diverse geographic regions and religions—from New York to Japan to Moldova to Papua New Guinea—report similar visions. Appearances of our dead during serious illness, crises, or bereavement are as old as the historical record. But in recent years, we have tended to explain them in either the fantastical terms of the supernatural or the reductive terms of neuroscience. This book is about how, when, and why our dead visit us. Allan Kellehear—a medical sociologist and expert on death, dying, and palliative care—has gathered data and conducted studies on these experiences across cultures. He also draws on the long-neglected work of early anthropologists who developed cultural explanations about why the dead visit. Deathbed visions conform to the rituals that underpin basic social relations and expectations—customs of greeting, support, exchange, gift-giving, and vigils—because the dead must communicate with us in a social language that we recognize. Kellehear emphasizes the personal consequences for those who encounter these visions, revealing their significance for how the dying person makes meaning of their experiences. Providing vital understanding of a widespread yet mysterious phenomenon, Visitors at the End of Life offers insights for palliative care professionals, researchers, and the bereaved.
Download or read book Into the Light written by M D John Lerma and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2009-01-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dr. Lerma has devoted his career to compiling anecdotal and scientific research on pre-death hallucinations from countless terminally ill patients. This groundbreaking book shares 16 inspirational stories of children and adults confronting their deaths through the comforting visions of divine beings.
Download or read book Death Is But a Dream written by Christopher Kerr and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-02-11 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first book to validate the meaningful dreams and visions that bring comfort as death nears. Christopher Kerr is a hospice doctor. All of his patients die. Yet he has cared for thousands of patients who, in the face of death, speak of love and grace. Beyond the physical realities of dying are unseen processes that are remarkably life-affirming. These include dreams that are unlike any regular dream. Described as "more real than real," these end-of-life experiences resurrect past relationships, meaningful events and themes of love and forgiveness; they restore life's meaning and mark the transition from distress to comfort and acceptance. Drawing on interviews with over 1,400 patients and more than a decade of quantified data, Dr. Kerr reveals that pre-death dreams and visions are extraordinary occurrences that humanize the dying process. He shares how his patients' stories point to death as not solely about the end of life, but as the final chapter of humanity's transcendence. Kerr's book also illuminates the benefits of these phenomena for the bereaved, who find solace in seeing their loved ones pass with a sense of calm closure. Beautifully written, with astonishing real-life characters and stories, this book is at its heart a celebration of our power to reclaim the dying process as a deeply meaningful one. Death Is But a Dream is an important contribution to our understanding of medicine's and humanity's greatest mystery.
Download or read book Final Gifts written by Maggie Callanan and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-02-14 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this moving and compassionate classic—now updated with new material from the authors—hospice nurses Maggie Callanan and Patricia Kelley share their intimate experiences with patients at the end of life, drawn from more than twenty years’ experience tending the terminally ill. Through their stories we come to appreciate the near-miraculous ways in which the dying communicate their needs, reveal their feelings, and even choreograph their own final moments; we also discover the gifts—of wisdom, faith, and love—that the dying leave for the living to share. Filled with practical advice on responding to the requests of the dying and helping them prepare emotionally and spiritually for death, Final Gifts shows how we can help the dying person live fully to the very end.
Download or read book A Social History of Dying written by Allan Kellehear and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-02-12 with total page 25 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our experiences of dying have been shaped by ancient ideas about death and social responsibility at the end of life. From Stone Age ideas about dying as otherworld journey to the contemporary Cosmopolitan Age of dying in nursing homes, Allan Kellehear takes the reader on a 2 million year journey of discovery that covers the major challenges we will all eventually face: anticipating, preparing, taming and timing for our eventual deaths. This book, first published in 2007, is a major review of the human and clinical sciences literature about human dying conduct. The historical approach of this book places our recent images of cancer dying and medical care in broader historical, epidemiological and global context. Professor Kellehear argues that we are witnessing a rise in shameful forms of dying. It is not cancer, heart disease or medical science that presents modern dying conduct with its greatest moral tests, but rather poverty, ageing and social exclusion.
Download or read book Approaching Death written by Committee on Care at the End of Life and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1997-10-30 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When the end of life makes its inevitable appearance, people should be able to expect reliable, humane, and effective caregiving. Yet too many dying people suffer unnecessarily. While an "overtreated" dying is feared, untreated pain or emotional abandonment are equally frightening. Approaching Death reflects a wide-ranging effort to understand what we know about care at the end of life, what we have yet to learn, and what we know but do not adequately apply. It seeks to build understanding of what constitutes good care for the dying and offers recommendations to decisionmakers that address specific barriers to achieving good care. This volume offers a profile of when, where, and how Americans die. It examines the dimensions of caring at the end of life: Determining diagnosis and prognosis and communicating these to patient and family. Establishing clinical and personal goals. Matching physical, psychological, spiritual, and practical care strategies to the patient's values and circumstances. Approaching Death considers the dying experience in hospitals, nursing homes, and other settings and the role of interdisciplinary teams and managed care. It offers perspectives on quality measurement and improvement, the role of practice guidelines, cost concerns, and legal issues such as assisted suicide. The book proposes how health professionals can become better prepared to care well for those who are dying and to understand that these are not patients for whom "nothing can be done."
Download or read book Visions Trips and Crowded Rooms written by David Kessler and published by Hay House, Inc. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Kessler, one of the most renowned experts on death and grief, takes on three uniquely shared experiences that challenge our ability to explain and fully understand the mystery of our final days. The first is "visions." As the dying lose sight of this world, some people appear to be looking into the world to come. The second shared experience is getting ready for a "trip." The phenomenon of preparing oneself for a journey isn’t new or unusual. In fact, during our loved ones’ last hours, they may often think of their impending death as a transition or journey. These trips may seem to us to be all about leaving, but for the dying, they may be more about arriving. Finally, the third phenomenon is "crowded rooms." The dying often talk about seeing a room full of people, as they constantly repeat the word crowded. In truth, we never die alone. Just as loving hands greeted us when we were born, so will loving arms embrace us when we die. In the tapestry of life and death, we may begin to see connections to the past that we missed in life. While death may look like a loss to the living, the last hours of a dying person may be filled with fullness rather than emptiness. In this fascinating book, which includes a new Afterword, Kessler brings us stunning stories from the bedsides of the dying that will educate, enlighten, and comfort us all.
Download or read book Permanent Visitors written by Kevin Moffett and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2006-09-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Settled amid the seasonal amusements and condominium-lined beaches of the Florida coast, the characters who inhabit Kevin Moffett’s award-winning stories reach out of their lives to find that something unexpected and mysterious has replaced what used to be familiar.Some are stalled in the present, alone or lonely, bemused by mortality and disappointment. Some move toward the future heartened by what they learn from those around them--a tattoo artist, an invented medicine man, zoo animals, strangers, fellow outsiders. Deftly rendered, these stories abound with oddness and grace.In “Tattooizm,” included in The Best American Short Stories 2006, a young woman struggles with a promise that her boyfriend is determined to make her keep. In the Nelson Algren Award–winning “Space,” a reluctantly undertaken errand forces a young man to finally confront the death of his mother. And in “The Medicine Man,” hailed by the Times (U.K.) as “perfectly pitched and perfectly written,” a man recounts his manic attachment to his sister.Moffett’s closely observed stories are candid and complex, funny and moving. The world of Permanent Visitors is an idiosyncratic and generous one, its inhabitants searching for constancy in a place crowded with contradiction.
Download or read book Advice for Future Corpses and Those Who Love Them written by Sallie Tisdale and published by Gallery Books. This book was released on 2019-06-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BOOK CRITICS’ TOP 10 BOOK OF THE YEAR “In its loving, fierce specificity, this book on how to die is also a blessedly saccharine-free guide for how to live” (The New York Times). Former NEA fellow and Pushcart Prize-winning writer Sallie Tisdale offers a lyrical, thought-provoking, yet practical perspective on death and dying in Advice for Future Corpses (and Those Who Love Them). Informed by her many years working as a nurse, with more than a decade in palliative care, Tisdale provides a frank, direct, and compassionate meditation on the inevitable. From the sublime (the faint sound of Mozart as you take your last breath) to the ridiculous (lessons on how to close the sagging jaw of a corpse), Tisdale leads us through the peaks and troughs of death with a calm, wise, and humorous hand. Advice for Future Corpses is more than a how-to manual or a spiritual bible: it is a graceful compilation of honest and intimate anecdotes based on the deaths Tisdale has witnessed in her work and life, as well as stories from cultures, traditions, and literature around the world. Tisdale explores all the heartbreaking, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, absurd, and even joyful experiences that accompany the work of dying, including: A Good Death: What does it mean to die “a good death”? Can there be more than one kind of good death? What can I do to make my death, or the deaths of my loved ones, good? Communication: What to say and not to say, what to ask, and when, from the dying, loved ones, doctors, and more. Last Months, Weeks, Days, and Hours: What you might expect, physically and emotionally, including the limitations, freedoms, pain, and joy of this unique time. Bodies: What happens to a body after death? What options are available to me after my death, and how do I choose—and make sure my wishes are followed? Grief: “Grief is the story that must be told over and over...Grief is the breath after the last one.” Beautifully written and compulsively readable, Advice for Future Corpses offers the resources and reassurance that we all need for planning the ends of our lives, and is essential reading for future corpses everywhere. “Sallie Tisdale’s elegantly understated new book pretends to be a user’s guide when in fact it’s a profound meditation” (David Shields, bestselling author of Reality Hunger).
Download or read book Attending the Dying written by Megory Anderson and published by Church Publishing, Inc.. This book was released on 2005-08-01 with total page 80 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A useful guide to being present and offering comfort to the dying and their families. Megory Anderson was called to a vigil at the bedside of a friend who was dying one night. That experience was so powerful that she began working with others who needed help attending to those who were dying. Today Anderson is the executive director of the Sacred Dying Foundation in San Francisco, and trains others in the art of "vigiling," a way of attending to the needs of the dying. This practical and concise handbook provides a brief overview of what to expect and how to respond to the needs of someone who is dying. Attending the Dying can be used by and for people of any faith perspective, as well as no particular faith. Chaplains, social workers, hospital-care workers, and friends or family of the dying will all find this a helpful companion for preparing themselves to be present to one of life's most sacred transitions.
Download or read book This Is Assisted Dying written by Stefanie Green and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An international bestseller, this compassionate memoir by a leading pioneer in medically assisted dying who helps suffering patients explore and fulfill their end of life choices is “written with sensitivity, grace, and candor...not to be missed” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Dr. Stefanie Green has been forging new paths in the field of medical assistance in dying since 2016. In her landmark memoir, Dr. Green reveals the reasons a patient might seek an assisted death, how the process works, what the event itself can look like, the reactions of those involved, and what it feels like to oversee proceedings and administer medications that hasten death. She describes the extraordinary people she meets and the unusual circumstances she encounters as she navigates the intricacy, intensity, and utter humanity of these powerful interactions. Deeply authentic and powerfully emotional, This Is Assisted Dying contextualizes the myriad personal, professional, and practical issues surrounding assisted dying by bringing readers into the room with Dr. Green, sharing the voices of her patients, her colleagues, and her own narrative. As our population confronts issues of wellness, integrity, agency, community, and how to live a connected, meaningful life, this progressive and compassionate book by a physician at the forefront of medically assisted dying offers comfort and potential relief. “A humane, clear-eyed view of how and why one can leave the world by choice” (Kirkus Reviews), This Is Assisted Dying will change the way people think about their options, and ultimately is less about death than about how we wish to live.
Download or read book Bedside Manners written by Katie Maxwell and published by Baker Books. This book was released on 2005-02-01 with total page 109 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most people have encountered a situation with an ill friend or relative when it has been difficult to know what to say or do. Even pastors and others in ministry are often at a loss when encountered with a critically ill person who is looking to them for some comfort and guidance. Katie Maxwell's Bedside Manners provides the reader practical directions for offering care in a variety of settings, including hospitals, the homes of shut-ins, and nursing homes. She even addresses often overlooked concerns-such as the pastoral care of children, caregivers, and patients who are dying-and offers intelligent advice like be prepared, be human, be silent, and be positive. Highly practical and inspiring, Bedside Manners is essential reading for anyone who has felt uncomfortable when trying to comfort the sick.
Download or read book Dying written by Denys Cope and published by Three Whales Pub.. This book was released on 2008 with total page 111 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Guide and Bedisde manual through the identifiable, predictable stages of the dying process, including thephysical, emotional, and spiritual aspects. Clear, simple support a person during their last months, weeks, days and hours of life.
Download or read book Compassionate Cities written by Allan Kellehear and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Once it was difficult to see end of life care beyond conventional medical intervention, but hospice and palliative care introduced a more holistic approach, providing quality of life for the dying and their families. This ground-breaking work takes end-of-life care beyond these palliative boundaries, describing a public health vision that involves whole communities adopting a compassionate approach to dying, death and loss. Written by a leading academic in the field of death and bereavement, this text outlines the historical, political and conceptual basis of compassionate cities, providing a community development model for end-of-life care. Moving away from infection control and health promotion Allan Kellehear invites us to think of a third wave movement of public health, joining empathy, equality and action together as practical policies. Presenting a radical new perspective to death, ageing and public health, Compassionate Cities is essential reading for academics and professionals alike.
Download or read book The Art of Dying written by Peter Fenwick and published by Continuum. This book was released on 2008-08-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new book to help the dying, their loved ones and their health care workers better understand the dying process and to come to terms with death itself. The Art of Dying is a contemporary version of the medieval Ars Moriendi-a manual on how to achieve a good death. Peter Fenwick is an eminent neuropsychiatrist, academic and expert on disorders of the brain. His most compelling and provocative research has been into the end of life phenomena, including near-death experiences and deathbed visions of the dying person, as well as the experiences of hospice and palliative care workers and relatives of dying people. Dr. Fenwick believes that consciousness may be independent of the brain and so able to survive the death of the brain, a theory which has divided the scientific community. The "problem with death" is deeply rooted in our culture and the social organization of death rituals. Fenwick believes that with serious engagement and through further investigation of these phenomena, he can help change attitudes so that we in the West can face up to death, and embrace it as a significant and sacred part of life. We have become used to believing that we have to shield each other from the idea of death. Fear of death means we view it as something to be fought every step of the way. Aimed at a broad popular readership, The Art of Dying looks at how other cultures have dealt with death and the dying process (The Tibetan "death system", Swedenborg, etc.) and compares this with phenomena reported through recent scientific research. It describes too the experiences of health care workers who are involved with end of life issues who feel that they need a better understanding of the dying process, and more training in how to help their patients die well by overcoming the common barriers to a good death, such as unfinished business and unresolved emotions of guilt or hate. From descriptions of the phenomena encountered by the dying and those around them, to mapping out ways in which we can die a "good death", this book is an excellent basis for helping people come to terms with death.
Download or read book The Visitors Paperback Edition written by Jessi Jezewska Stevens and published by . This book was released on 2024-02-06 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On the eve of the Occupy Wall Street protests, C is flat broke. Once a renowned textile artist, she's now the sole proprietor of an arts supply store in Lower Manhattan. Divorced, alone, at loose ends, C is stuck with a struggling business, a stack of bills, a new erotic interest in her oldest girlfriend, and a persistent hallucination in the form of a rogue garden gnome with a pointed interest in systems collapse . . . C needs to put her medical debt and her sex life in order, but how to make concrete plans with this little visitor haunting her apartment, sporting a three-piece suit and delivering impromptu lectures on the vulnerability of the national grid? Moreover, what's all this computer code doing in the story of her life? And do the answers to all of C's questions lie with an eco-hacktivist cabal threatening to end modern life as we know it? The Visitors is mordantly funny as it follows a woman dealing with debt, lust and an unwelcome visitor in the last days of a broken status quo. It peers into How We Got Here and asks What We Do Next, whatever our personal hallucinations may be.
