In this visionary memoir, based on a groundbreaking New York Times Magazine story, award-winning journalist Katy Butler ponders her parents' desires for "Good Deaths" and the forces within medicine that stood in the way. Katy Butler was living thousands of miles from her vigorous and self-reliant parents when the call came: a crippling stroke had left her proud seventy-nine-year-old father unable to fasten a belt or complete a sentence. Tragedy at first drew the family closer: her mother devoted herself to caregiving, ...
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In this visionary memoir, based on a groundbreaking New York Times Magazine story, award-winning journalist Katy Butler ponders her parents' desires for "Good Deaths" and the forces within medicine that stood in the way. Katy Butler was living thousands of miles from her vigorous and self-reliant parents when the call came: a crippling stroke had left her proud seventy-nine-year-old father unable to fasten a belt or complete a sentence. Tragedy at first drew the family closer: her mother devoted herself to caregiving, and Butler joined the twenty-four million Americans helping shepherd parents through their final declines. Then doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker, keeping his heart going but doing nothing to prevent his six-year slide into dementia, near-blindness, and misery. When he told his exhausted wife, "I'm living too long," mother and daughter were forced to confront a series of wrenching moral questions. When does death stop being a curse and become a blessing? Where is the line between saving a life and prolonging a dying? When do you say to a doctor, "Let my loved one go?" When doctors refused to disable the pacemaker, condemning her father to a prolonged and agonizing death, Butler set out to understand why. Her quest had barely begun when her mother took another path. Faced with her own grave illness, she rebelled against her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and met death head-on. With a reporter's skill and a daughter's love, Butler explores what happens when our terror of death collides with the technological imperatives of medicine. Her provocative thesis is that modern medicine, in its pursuit of maximum longevity, often creates more suffering than it prevents. This revolutionary blend of memoir and investigative reporting lays bare the tangled web of technology, medicine, and commerce that dying has become. And it chronicles the rise of Slow Medicine, a new movement trying to reclaim the "Good Deaths" our ancestors prized. Knocking on Heaven's Door is a map through the labyrinth of a broken medical system. It will inspire the difficult conversations we need to have with loved ones as it illuminates the path to a better way of death.
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Add this copy of Knocking on Heaven's Door: the Path to a Better Way of to cart. $2.74, good condition, Sold by Stephen White Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Bradford, WEST YORKSHIRE, UNITED KINGDOM, published 2013 by Scribner.
Add this copy of Knocking on Heaven's Door: the Path to a Better Way of to cart. $8.52, good condition, Sold by Goodwill of Greater Milwaukee rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Milwaukee, WI, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Scribner.
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Add this copy of Knocking on Heaven's Door: the Path to a Better Way of to cart. $8.81, good condition, Sold by Zoom Books East rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Glendale Heights, IL, UNITED STATES, published 2014 by Scribner.
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Add this copy of Knocking on Heaven's Door: the Path to a Better Way of to cart. $9.02, very good condition, Sold by More Than Words rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Waltham, MA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Scribner Book Company.
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Add this copy of Knocking on Heaven's Door: the Path to a Better Way of to cart. $9.02, good condition, Sold by More Than Words rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Waltham, MA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Scribner Book Company.
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I also bought copies to give to my 2 daughters so they'll have guidance when my husband & I become the very elderly. The book is excellent.
MorningReader
Mar 20, 2014
A Tough, but Important Read
After losing my own parents and then my in-laws. I remembered feeling very torn by how I'd like my last years on earth to be. Katy Butler offers great insight to being enmeshed in the medical system at a time when there is really no cure for dying. After telling her experiences, she offers suggestions for other avenues we can take instead of visits to the ER or nursing facilities. I'm keeping her book as a resource for me someday. At 65 I was happy to learn that it's okay to accept death and not prolong the dying.
