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    Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System
    Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System
    Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System
    Ebook516 pages6 hours

    Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System

    By Stephen P. Kiernan

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    About this ebook

    In Last Rights, award-winning journalist Stephen P. Kiernan shows how patients and families can regain control of the dying process, creating familial intimacy like never before.

    "Gripping…A superb resource for boomers dealing with their parents' final days…as well as for health-care professionals who need to hear this story from the other side."-Kirkus Reviews

    With advances in medicine, technology, and daily diet and exercise practices, Americans are living longer than ever before. We have an unprecedented opportunity for meaningful closure – free of pain, among loved ones, with our affairs in order and spiritual calm attained. Instead, most of us discover that our doctor has minimal training in providing end-of-life care, and will seek to extend life no matter how painful, expensive and futile that effort might be.

    Bolstered by both scientific research and intimate portraits of people from all walks of life, Last Rights offers a hopeful, profound vision for patients, doctors, and families: a way to honor people during their greatest vulnerability, a chance for families to reconnect, an opportunity for the medical system to treat patients with ultimate respect, a time to give comfort and compassion to those we most love.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateNov 14, 2006
    ISBN9781429916851
    Last Rights: Rescuing the End of Life from the Medical System
    Author

    Stephen P. Kiernan

    Stephen P. Kiernan is the author of the novels The Curiosity, The Hummingbird, The Baker's Secret, Universe of Two, and The Glass Chateau. A graduate of Middlebury College, Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, he spent more than twenty years as a journalist, winning many award before turning to fiction writing. He has also worked nationwide on improving end of life medical care through greater use of hospice. Kiernan lives in Vermont.

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      Book preview

      Last Rights - Stephen P. Kiernan

      PART ONE

      THE IMPRINT A BODY MAKES

      Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.

      —LEO TOLSTOY

      CHAPTER ONE

      LAST HOURS

      On the final night of his life, Jack happened to glance out the window just before eleven and notice that it was snowing: fat flakes cascading past the porch light, changing direction in a puff of wind like a school of fish veering from a predator.

      Had Jack known what lay ahead, the seven hours left to him, he might have done something other than turn back to the television. He might have reached for the phone and called his daughter, a college freshman, to send her his love and let her tap him for spending money one last time. He might have climbed the stairs to his son’s room, interrupting that bookish boy’s latest fascination for a discussion of how to help his mother weather widowhood. Jack might have gone to his wife, already in bed, to plan for life without him or remind her where his will was stored or revisit their fondest memories like jewelers scrutinizing rubies. He might simply have decided to go to the window, to watch the snow and contemplate the infinite.

      Instead, Jack plunged his hand into a bag of potato chips, washed a mouthful down with the warm dregs of a beer, and watched the Celtics lose in overtime. He lit a cigarette, an unfiltered Camel—he reasoned that if you’re going to smoke, you might as well taste it. Though he’d never seen the Celtics play in person, in the morning his loyalty would cost him both five bucks and a razzing from Bo, a coworker buddy who favored the Lakers.

      It was December 1, 1976, a Monday, and too early for snow. Jack switched off the TV, crushed out his smoke. With a beefy forearm he gathered the empties against his stomach and shuffled into the kitchen.

      After shoving everything into the trash, Jack went back through the house dousing lights. He moved slowly, aware that lately the furniture crowded him because he’d put on so much weight. Always a hefty guy, Jack now had a bona fide belly, a smoker’s cough he hacked through some mornings, a general sluggishness in his blood. He would have gone to a doctor, but why bother when you already know what the problem is? You’re getting older, fifty-six in April, and the beer and the sweet tooth and the butts and the lack of exercise have a bigger effect now than when you were twenty-six. Jack put a hand on his lower back as he bent down to turn off a table lamp. Yes, he should cut down. And exercise. Definitely quit the Camels, God forbid. But a man cannot be disciplined about everything. A man who has worked hard all his life also deserves some pleasures, doesn’t

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