Two doctors offer a guide for terminal patients to help them take control of their final days and die with dignity.Knowing our rights to refuse treatment, and ways to bring death earlier if pain or distress cannot be alleviated, will spare us the frightening helplessness that can rob our last days of meaning and personal connection. Drs. Wanzer and Glenmullen clarify what patients should insist of their doctors, including the right to enough pain medication even if...

While every one of us hopes "to die well," this may not be possible without knowing our rights about care at the end of life.How can futile medical treatment be stopped?When might death be hastened?How can each of us retain control of these decisions?The information in To Die Well is both comforting and empowering. Knowing our rights to refuse treatment, as well as legal ways to bring about death if pain or distress cannot be alleviated, will spare us the fright...

**#1 New York Times BestsellerIn Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending**Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the huma...

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From renowned mental health expert and speaker Dr. Gabor Maté, this acclaimed, bestselling guide provides insight into the mind-body link between illness and health, and the critical role that stress and our emotional makeup play in an array of common diseases.In this accessible and groundbreaking book—filled with the moving stories of real people—medical doctor and bestselling author Gabor Maté shows that emotion and psy...

The acclaimed author of Carved in Sand—a veteran investigative journalist who endured persistent back pain for decades—delivers the definitive book on the subject: an essential examination of all facets of the back pain industry, exploring what works, what doesn't, what may cause harm, and how to get on the road to recovery.In her effort to manage her chronic back pain, investigative reporter Cathryn Jakobson Ramin spent years and a small fortune on a panoply of treatments...

This is an exceptual book with sections that honestly discuss the effects that pain has on relationships, dealing with the medical community, the realities of access to adequate care, understanding the medications and how they are safely used, the medical nature of pain, suffering, sleep problems, and so on. Patients and families benefit from it's real life origins as they become more realistic and better equipped to deal with the pain.

How can a teenager adopted at birth nearly die because his real mother didn’t get a measles shot?How can a husband’s faith in his wife’s fidelity determine whether radical treatment will cure her or kill her?How can a missed eye doctor appointment reveal a genetic disease?How can doctors choose the right course for a pregnant woman when one may kill her and the other would abort her fetus?Answers to these questions and more are pursued eve...

From the beloved New York Times columnist, trusted authority on health, and bestselling author comes this complete guide to everything you need to know–emotionally, spiritually, and practically–to prepare for the end of life.An invaluable road map to putting your affairs in order–or helping your loved ones do the same–this comprehensive book will answer every question you might have about what does and does not help smooth the transition between life and the Great Beyond. ...

At the age of twenty-four, Paula Kamen's life changed in an instant. While she was putting in her contacts, the left lens disturbed a constellation of nerves behind her eye. The pain was more piercing than that of any other headache she had ever experienced. More than a decade later, she still has a headache-the exact same headache. From surgery to a battery of Botox injections to a dousing of Lithuanian holy water, from a mountain of pharmaceutical products to aromatherapy and even a vibr...

“Life is short, and the Art so long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious; and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and the externals, cooperate.”–attributed to Hippocrates, c. 400 B.C.E.The award-winning author of How We Die and The Art of Aging, venerated physician Sherwin B. Nuland has now written his most thoughtful and engaging book. The Uncert...

As a practicing physician of internal and geriatric medicine at a major urban teaching hospital, I take care of frail older patients and see a lot of dying. From my experience, health care providers, caregivers and families dont understand how to properly care for older adults with multiple medical problems. As a society, we need to fifi nd more value in care giving. Furthermore, much too often what we see is distressing, dehumanizing and lonely deaths that have become the norm for older p...

A groundbreaking look at the connection between germs and mental illness, and how we can protect ourselves.Is it possible to catch autism or OCD the same way we catch the flu? Can a child's contact with cat litter lead to schizophrenia? In her eye-opening new book, National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author Harriet Washington reveals that we can in fact "catch" mental illness. In Infectious Madness, Washington presents the new germ theory, which posi...