Dying and Living
Perspective from an Intensive Care Physician. A thirty-year journey through intensive care medicine, the questions it forced, and what it has to teach us about living well.
As there is generally no plan for dying, there is seldom a plan for living.
A thousand bedside conversations, distilled.
For the third time, the author had rescued an Alzheimer's patient in respiratory failure from death. Rounding in her nursing home after discharge, he expected gratitude from her husband. Instead, the husband asked to be called the next time she decompensated. Keeping her alive had exhausted their savings. She was a human being with a terminal disease, curled up in a ball from muscle contractures, screaming each time she was stimulated.
That moment forced the question this book is built around: what does it actually mean to care for someone at the end of their life — and what have we, as a culture, mistaken for caring?
Dying and Living traces the evolution of an intensive care physician who thought he understood dying, and discovered he did not. Drawing on three decades of bedside experience, a thousand end-of-life discussions, and his own near-death experience with cancer, Dr. Ron Haake offers a perspective that is unflinching, deeply human, and ultimately about how to live.
From the Opening Pages
For the third time, I had rescued an Alzheimer's patient in respiratory failure from death. While rounding in her nursing home after her discharge, I ran into her husband and expected gratitude and a handshake. Instead, he asked to be called the next time she decompensated.
Keeping her alive had exhausted all their savings. I assumed code status had been previously discussed and he had wanted "everything done." That was not the case. She was a human being with a terminal disease. She was curled up in a ball from muscle contractures, and a feeding tube had been placed to keep her alive. Each time she was stimulated, she screamed.
What the hell was I doing?
What Readers Are Saying
"A profoundly human book. Dr. Haake writes with the clarity of a clinician and the humility of someone who has sat with too many families on the worst day of their lives. Required reading."
"This book changed how I'm thinking about my own parents' care. It is honest about what modern medicine can and cannot do, and what we owe each other when the answers run out."
"Every physician should read this. Every family should read this. It will make you a better advocate, a better caregiver, and a more present human being."
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