Terminal
Medical Care
from
the Consumer's Point of View
Copyright
© 2020 by James Leonard Park
Books
reviewed
by James Park,
advocate
of the right-to-die with careful safeguards.
The
comments in red are the evaluations of
this reviewer.
The
books are organized by quality,
beginning with the best.
1. Katy
Butler
The Art of Dying Well:
A Practical Guide to a Good End
of Life
(New York: Scribner/Simon &
Schuster: www.SimonandSchuster.com,
2019) 274 pages
(ISBN: 978-1-5011-3531-6; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: R726.8.B882 2019)
This book should become a
best-seller
not because it has all the answers
but because it has all the questions.
I suggest a
different title:
The
Art of Dying Well:
Seven
Stages of Your Final Journey.
Here are the original chapter titles
and this reviewer's suggested
alternatives:
1.
Resilience
Preparing a Foundation
2.
Slowing Down
Changing the Goals of Medical
Care---Fast to Slow
3. Adaptation
Adjusting to Permanent Decline
4.
Awareness of Mortality
Accepting Death
5.
House of Cards
Downward Spiral Started by
Medical Interventions
6.
Preparing for a Good Death
Designing Your Last Year
7.
Active Dying
Dying with Grace
Such new titles would more clearly make
this a handbook
that can be read in any
order.
Most readers nowadays do not read books
beginning at Chapter 1 and reading to the end.
Rather, readers come with urgent
questions
that need immediate answers.
For instance, how do we choose a hospice?
They will turn first
to the chapter
that seems best to describe the
stage
the dying patient is currently
experiencing.
This book already lends itself to being used in this way.
Even if the foundation was not laid (Chapter 1),
the patient might already be in the downward spiral
created by uncoordinated medical interventions (Chapter 5).
And the patient and family need to know what to do next.
Any new edition should also include
more information
about end-of-life written
documents
and end-of-life options for
shortening the process of
dying.
The best parts of this book are the stories of patients.
We could benefit from even more accounts
of patients who were able to manage the process of dying
better than what happens to most patients
under standard terminal medical care.
Dying will be the last thing that happens to us.
But we can make choices
about this final journey
that will make each stage better.
And this book might
be the best place
to begin planning how to handle
our own dying.
The publisher's website (at top of this review)
gives considerable more
information
about the contents of this excellent book.
2. Katy
Butler
Knocking on
Heaven's Door:
The Path to a Better Way of Death
(New York: Scribner/Simon &
Schuster: www.SimonandSchuster.com,
2013) 322 pages
(ISBN: 978-1-4516-4197-4; hardcover)
(Library of Congress call number: not given in book)
This moving memoir of the deaths of two
parents
illustrates many problems of the way we die.
Katy Butler's father suffered a slow decline into death,
unnecessarily drawn out by the fact that no one took the initiative
to end medical treatments and life-supports
—which
in his case was mainly an implanted pacemaker.
By the time this became a serious option,
the patient himself had declined beyond the point
of making his own medical
decisions.
Rather than turning off
a pacemaker
when a patient has come to the end of his or her meaningful life,
some doctors are willing to
let the batteries run low,
which will result in a random later death
when this form of life-support finally gives out
because there is no more electricity to keep it going.
Is such thinking mainly about the doctor's self-concept or reputation
rather than what would be best
for the patient?
Katy Butler's mother took a different pathway towards death:
After exploring life-extending options, she decided not to take them.
Her dying was short and merciful.
Family dynamics will often complicate
end-of-life
decisions.
And this family was no exception.
Reading the details of one family's problems
might help us to do better planning
in order to avoid similar problems
ourselves.
Because Katy Butler was already
a professional author,
she knew how to get this book
published and well-known.
She has continued to campaign for consumer-control of health-care.
The author was not an expert on any end-of-life issues
when she went thru the traumas
recounted in this book,
but after her parents' deaths, she did considerable research.
And as a result of the success of this book,
she is frequently called upon
to speak for the movement to improve the process of dying.
The title was poorly chosen (probably by the publisher),
since none of the people involved believed in anything after death.
There are no attempts to get into heaven.
And the author's father certainly did nothing to hasten his death.
A better title might have been: Too Much Medical Care:
Can We Find Better Pathways
Towards Death?
Many readers will experience similar problems
if they do not take charge
of the dying process.
It is helpful to know how others have suffered on the way to death.
These can be cautionary tales,
helping us to avoid similar pitfalls.
This book is written
well enough to be read aloud,
which is what I did, while my
life-partner washed the dishes.
She also found it a very
meaningful book.
And it led to discussions of deaths we have known.
3. Bart
Windrum
Notes from the
Waiting Room:
Managing a Loved
One's End-of-Life Hospitalization
(Boulder, CO:
Axiom Action: www.AxiomAction.com,
2008) 336 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-9801090-0-9; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: R726.8.W56 2008)
The
under-achieving title might give the (false) impression
that this is a book scribbled in the hospital lobby,
recounting the unfortunate events that befell a dying relative.
But no!
This is a well-researched and well-written guidebook
for getting ready to manage dying in a hospital.
It did grow out of
the author's experiences
with the deaths of both of his parents.
And some details are shared about these ill-managed deaths.
But most of the pages are devoted to organized discussion
of the many issues that confront anyone who must die.
The chapters:
1. Being an effective proxy decision-maker for your dying relative.
2. Creating the necessary paper documents to achieve a good death.
3. Improving communication among all players—professional and lay.
4. Consumers taking control
of the hospital processes to prevent
mistakes.
5. Planning for what is going to happen next and getting support.
6. Anticipating crises—and possibly changing providers.
7. Do Not Resuscitate and life-supports
—advance plans, doctor's orders,
& exceptions.
8. Signs of impending death—and dealing with the body.
9. Radical alternatives to standard dying-in-a-hospital.
As the author himself discovered, most laypersons
have little idea of what dying in a modern hospital involves.
But more than half of us will die in hospitals.
Thus, this guidebook should be read some years in advance
by everyone who knows that he or she will be called upon
to make medical decisions at the end of someone's life.
(If no one else, that "someone" will be the reader.)
This book gives
the impression
that most hospital deaths are poorly handled.
Perhaps someone will do
research
by asking relatives at
least a year later
what they thought in retrospect
about a dying-process they observed.
Perhaps there was no way to
postpone that death.
But what could have made
the process of dying
easier for everyone
involved?
Consumers of
death-bed services
—all
future patients and those
who will be at the bedside—
should read this book to get
ready for the end-of-life shocks.
But providers should also read this book.
Doctors, nurses, hospital
administrators, etc.
should take a professional
interest in improving the process of dying.
(All such health-care workers
will also be patients later.)
Most of the unfortunate shocks
of dying-in-a-hospital can be avoided.
Everyone who wants to improve
terminal medical care
could read this book as a catalog
of errors.
Each reader who works in
terminal care
will be able to find at least one
thing to improve this week
so that the tragedies described
in this book
do not happen to patients and
their families
who are currently receiving
terminal medical care.
One of the possible Power
Documents missing from Chapter 2
(which
has emerged since this book was published)
is the POLST—Physician's Order for
Life-Sustaining Treatment.
In light of the known medical
facts, the doctor and the patient
create a document specifying which end-of-life treatments
will be provided and
which will not.
Sometimes called Medical Order
for Life-Sustaining Treatments (MOLST),
these written statements are
more comprehensive than
Do-Not-Resuscitate orders (DNR):
When should the patient be hospitalized?
When
should life-supports,
including tubes and drugs, be used?
One provision of a comprehensive Advance Directive for Medical Care
might avoid much of the stress
and trauma of dying in a hospital:
The One-Month-Less
Club is for patients who decide in advance
to skip
the last month of standard terminal care
and go directly into hospice
care.
With careful preparations, we
can even die at home if that seems best.
A timely death (not too soon,
not too late)
might be better than standard dying.
Of the deaths you have
observed,
which were meaninglessly
prolonged by futile treatments?
Dying in a hospital is going to cost about $5,000
per day,
especially if we receive life-support in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).
Bills from doctors not employed by the hospital will be extra.
If dying will take ten days, this amounts to $50,000.
Or if dying is prolonged to two weeks, the total will be about $70,000.
Many terminal hospitalizations
last three weeks, costing over $100,000.
Hospice care is only a few hundred dollars per day.
It should not matter to us who
actually pays the bills
—the taxpayers thru Medicare and/or Medicaid,
a tax-supported hospital, some private health-insurance,
or our personal estates.
Thus, shortening the process of
dying
is the most direct way to save
money.
And at these prices, we
should be living like kings.
How would we like to organize our dying
so that we achieve the greatest meaning for the lowest cost?
We might plan to die in a right-to-die
hospice.
Such a hospice program would openly embrace
all
legal
end-of-life choices.
The publisher's website (link at the beginning)
gives the actual titles of the chapters and other contents.
A better title might have been:
Treated-to-Death:
Managing
End-of-Life Hospitalization.
4. Sharon R. Kaufman
And a Time to Die:
How American Hospitals Shape the
End of Life
(New York: Scribner/Simon
& Schuster: www.SimonandSchuster.com,
2005) 400 pages
(ISBN: 0-7432-6476-2; hard cover)
(Library of Congress call number: R726.8.K385 2005)
(Medical call number: BF789.D4K21a 2005)
A medical
anthropologist recounts her experience of watching
every aspect of dying as it takes place in the modern hospital.
The stories of the last days of several actual
patients
forms the back-bone of this book.
How was each death handled by the patient, the family,
the nurses, the doctors, and others who became involved?
The overwhelming impression left with the reader
is that hospital deaths are handled very poorly.
Each story shows how this process of dying
could have been
improved.
Usually someone was not willing
to acknowledge that
death was coming.
Either the patient, the family, or the doctors were in denial.
They wanted to try yet one more treatment,
even if the chances of success were remote.
In most cases, there was no written plan for
dying.
Everyone involved was just muddling
thru
---even those who had attended several deaths
as a regular part of their medical practice.
The patients had no written Advance
Directives
for Medical Care.
The doctors had no written
Physician
Orders
for Life-Sustaining Treatment.
The hospitals were organized only for treating disease and injury,
not for easing the inevitable passage of all patients to their
deaths.
Chapter 8 deals with a little-known
patient-population:
the life-support ward.
This is a unit of the hospital system that cares for patients
who are completely dependent on some form of life-support:
tube-feeding, ventilator, etc.
They are all chronic patients, rather than acute patients.
And their time in the life-support ward is measured in years
rather than days, weeks, or months.
Many have severe limitations to their mental
capacities.
Some would be described as comatose.
Others are definitely in Persistent Vegetative State (PVS).
Most will stay in the life-support ward for the rest
of their lives.
Of these patients in the life-support ward,
about zero had any written end-of-life plans.
Only very rarely does anyone decide to turn off the machines
and allow the patient to die.
The default 'choice' is simply to continue all forms of life-support.
This ward
would be an excellent place for a Medical
Futility
Monitor
to evaluate the reasons for
continuing such 'medical care'.
5. Helen Stanton Chapple
No Place for Dying:
Hospitals and the Ideology of
Rescue
(Walnut Creek, CA: Left
Coast Press: www.LCoastPress.com,
2010) 324 pages
(ISBN: 978-1-59874-403-3; paperback)
(ISBN: 978-1-59874-402-6; hard cover)
(eISBN: 978-1-59874-703-4; electronic)
(Library of Congress call number: R726.8.G4677 2010)
(Medical call number: WB310C467n 2010)
The medical care
industry has its own priorities for patient care.
And often these serve the interests
of employees
who make their living from providing medical services
rather than the interests of
the patients who receive care.
Acute-care hospitals are supposed to rescue patients from death.
Everything is designed to stave-off
death,
to achieve at least one more hour of 'life' for this patient.
Only when all efforts fail is the patient declared dead.
A surprising number of 'medical' decisions
are actually made by considering costs and hospital politics.
Will the doctors be
pleased by the decisions made in this hospital?
If not, they can usually take their patients elsewhere.
The author
makes an extremely convincing case
that the modern hospital is no place
for dying.
"The only thing we do here is cure the patients."
But, of course, many patients do
die in hospitals.
When they are declared "DNR",
they might be sent to back wards,
where they will be supported
with comfort-care.
But this is no longer considered
the real work of the
hospital.
This book is
mainly about the need for better patient care
---not any examples of such care
being provided.
Because the last page of each medical record will read: DEATH,
there should be some better preparation for patients and families
whose hospital experience will end with the death of the patient.
Should we create for each patient a document called
"Pathway towards Death" or "End-of-Life Medical Orders" (ELMO)?
It is known with absolute certainty that each patient will eventually
die.
So planning the best possible pathway will never be wasted effort.
If important choices are made in advance,
the usually confusions and conflicts surrounding death will diminish.
And we might make meaningful
places for dying
within modern medical care for all patients who die---that is everyone.
6. Bart
Windrum
The Promised
Landing:
A Gateway to
Peaceful Dying
(Boulder, CO:
Axiom Action: www.AxiomAction.com,
2018) 216 pages
(ISBN: 978-0-9801090-4-7; paperback)
(Library of Congress call number: not given in book)
Several
problems of terminal medical care
are explored
using a matrix showing how they are related:
Insleep dying
Sudden dying
Erroneous dying
Emergency Room dying
Suicidal dying
Early dying
Midstream dying
Endstate dying
SlowMotion dying
Delayed dying
Suspended dying
Repetitive dying
Vegetative dying
Released dying
Postponed dying
Failed dying
Collaborative dying
As might be obvious from these titles,
most of the ways we die are unfortunate.
But the reason for discussing these problems
is to suggest ways the unwanted pathways
can be avoided in the future.
How can standard terminal care be changed
so that we have more peaceful dying
and less meaningless
suffering?
Another book
should be written
correlating the problems as experienced
by patients and their families
with new solutions proposed
by physicians.
This book is more an analysis
of the problems of terminal care as experienced
by laypersons
than practical suggestions for preventing these problems
or solving them.
Medical options are not well explained to the patients.
The doctors usually assume
that the patients
will follow their recommendations anyway,
so why go into the technical details?
The doctor knows the follow-up options that will be used
if the first efforts do not work,
but why bother the patient
and family with such details?
Windrum knows
the standard pathways towards death
(comfort-care only, induced terminal coma,
giving up life-supports,
withdrawing water),
but he prefers
to use adjectives such as
Welcoming, Accepting, Cautious, Resistant,
Denying.
It remains to be seen which readers will find the
matrix helpful.
But even without following this particular
way
of organizing the problems of dying,
all readers can benefit from the descriptions
of what happens
at the end.
The narrative parts---telling
the stories of dying patients---
are much more compelling and memorable
that the abstract discussion of the problems
of dying.
Created
March 26, 2014; Revised 4-1-2014; 4-2-2014; 4-3-2014; 4-7-2014;
5-7-2014; 8-21-2014; 10-21-2014;
1-3-2015; 1-20-2015; 4-22-2015; 6-28-2015; 3-19-2018; 12-12-2019; 10-3-2020; 10-28-2020;
Some
related bibliographies
Best
Books on Terminal Care (from the Doctor's Point of View)
Advance
Directives for Medical Care—The Best Books
Books
on Medical Futility
Preparing
for Death
Books
on Hospice Care
Books
on Life-Ending Decisions
Safeguards
for Life-Ending Decisions—Best Books
Medical
Methods of Managing Dying
Books
on Helping Patients to Die
Go
to
the beginning of this website
James
Leonard Park—Free
Library