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At the End of Life

By: Lee Gutkind - editor, Francine Prose - introduction, Karen Wolk Feinstein - foreword
Narrated by: Kitty Hendrix, Al Kessel
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Publisher's summary

What should medicine do when it can't save your life?

The modern healthcare system has become proficient at staving off death with aggressive interventions. And yet, eventually everyone dies - and although most Americans say they would prefer to die peacefully at home, more than half of all deaths take place in hospitals or health care facilities.

At the End of Life - the latest collaborative book project between the Creative Nonfiction Foundation and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation - tackles this conundrum head on. Featuring 22 compelling personal-medical narratives, the collection explores death, dying, and palliative care, and highlights current features, flaws, and advances in the healthcare system.

Here, a poet and former hospice worker reflects on death's mysteries; a son wanders the halls of his mother's nursing home, lost in the small absurdities of the place; a grief counselor struggles with losing his own grandfather; a medical intern traces the origins and meaning of time; a mother anguishes over her decision to turn off her daughter's life support and allow her organs to be harvested; and a nurse remembers many of her former patients.

These original, compelling personal narratives reveal the inner workings of hospitals, homes, and hospices where patients, their doctors, and their loved ones all battle to hang on - and to let go.

©2012 Creative Nonfiction Books (P)2018 Tantor
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What listeners say about At the End of Life

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Good listen, I cried on and off

This is a mixture of personal stories that each has faced when being the one left behind from those who have passed. Some of these essays are very heart wrenching. It gives a broad look into how everyone sees the end of life differently and how some feelings that we have we are not alone in feeling.

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Boring

This is a collection of essays that focus on end-of-life experiences and issues. Should be interesting but is tediously boring.
Part of the problem lies in the droning, reverent tones assumed by the narrators.

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