Items related to Peaceful Transitions: Stories of Success and Compassion;...
Peaceful Transitions: Stories of Success and Compassion; Plan Now, Die Later--Ironclad Strategy - Softcover
Synopsis
Your goals for the last chapter of life may not differ from other chapters: to maximize pleasure and minimize suffering as much as possible. Control over dying can prevent both premature and prolonged dying. Control can also determine how much and how long you suffer before you die. What distinguishes the last chapter? The chances are two out of three you will not be able to express your current desires. That is why you must decide NOW, while you still can. First learn about your likely end-of-life scenarios, such as Advanced Dementia. Second, decide what you would want if you were in that condition. Third, memorialize your wishes to inform your future caregivers and physicians. While these three steps sound straightforward, in practice they are not. First, it is NOT easy to learn about what it is like to live in Advanced Dementia. Second, it is NOT easy to learn all about your legal end-of-life options. Third, there is a huge difference between REQUESTING and GETTING others to honor your Known Wishes. The reasons are complex, cultural, powerful, and constantly changing. Yet the obstacles these challenge present can be overcome. The first section (or separate book) Peaceful Transitions: Stories of Success and Compassion explains why health care professionals and institutions and even close relatives may challenge your end-of-life wishes, what it is like to live in the stage of Advanced Dementia and other terminal illnesses, and what option to avoid a long and painful dying is legal almost everywhere. This Section/book of stories has two goals: to educate and to motivate.
Of all diseases, the advanced stage of Alzheimer's and related dementias are the most cruel (robbing victims of their humanity), long (lasting three years or more), frustrating (in trying to improve quality of life), costly (may devastate our economy), and escalating (will increase 3 to 4-fold by mid-Century). Destined to afflict fourteen million baby boomers directly, the Alzheimer's epidemic will affect most families and our entire society in is staggering proportions. Research in Great Britain revealed that one out of three people older than 65 will die with dementia. Unfortunately, the searched-for cure is at least a decade or more away. Current medications to slow down the progression of brain deterioration are only partially and temporarily effective.
Two aspects of the disease, dementia, make it especially problematic: 1) Often, there is NO high-tech life-sustaining medical treatment to withhold even after all agree that it is enough; 2) The disease itself makes it impossible to ask patients what they would want. In the opinion of author Dr. Terman and his five critical editors, there is only one solution that lets a person live as long as possible to avoid premature dying and is still effective. They call this solution, the ''Plan Now, Die Later Ironclad Strategy.'' The TOPICS in the Second Section/book, Peaceful Transitions: Plan Now, Die Later Ironclad Strategy presents the step by step way you can make sure that, when the time comes, others will honor your Known Wishes. TOPICS include the comforting opinion of a Catholic priest/health ethicist that ''Natural Dying'' can be consistent with the church's teachings in certain circumstances; how the new ''Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment'' forms threaten to override your previously created diligent decisions represented in your Living Will; how to select a person to be your proxy/agent; and how one can create and modify a strategic set of forms for half a lifetime.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
Stanley A. Terman is a board-certified psychiatrist. He received an AB from Brown University, a PhD (biophysics) from MIT, and an MD from the University of Iowa. During his first five years in California, he taught at University of California, Irvine.
The continuous thread of Dr. Terman's professional goal is to empower people to make informed decisions so they can successfully meet challenges in their lives... with more pleasure, less suffering, and improved relationships. Over the years, he has employed a variety of modes. These include strategic psychotherapy with patients; founding and leading a non-profit organization; writing a medical thriller and three non-fiction books including a revision; and new forms and tools for Advance Care Planning. His career has always been devoted to helping families and couples in crisis. For the last fifteen years, he has specialized on reducing the suffering of terminally ill patients and their loved ones. He is intensely motivated to prevent months to years of suffering by an unwanted, prolonged process of dying while also PREVENTING PREMATURE DYING.
In 2000, Dr. Terman founded a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization that became Caring Advocates in 2005. He is currently its CEO and Medical Director. Caring Advocates helps people attain timely, peaceful transitions A) by informing them about their end-of-life conditions and choices; B) by helping them create an ''ironclad strategy''; and later, C) by encouraging all to honor their Known Wishes. In addition to service, Caring Advocates has educational programs; one informs people that although well-intentioned, some professionals and lay people make assumptions that actually violate the First Principle of Medical Ethics: DO NO HARM. One of Caring Advocates' research projects is to learn what choices people will make for their end-of-life treatment--if they are fully informed.
Dr. Terman is the author of Lethal Choice (2008), a medical/legal/psychological thriller, and these non-fiction books: The BEST WAY to Say Goodbye: A Legal Peaceful Choice at the End of Life (2007); Peaceful Transitions: Stories of Success and Compassion (Second Edition, 2011); and Peaceful Transitions: Plan Now, Die Later Ironclad Strategy (2011). The last two are also available in a combined, hardbound edition. To explain: ''Stories'' has two goals: to educate and to motivate; ''Plan Now, Die Later'' has two other goals: to explain the rationale and provide detailed step-by-step instructions to create a personalized ''ironclad strategy.'' All books are available as e-books.
Dr. Terman also created a new tool, My Way Cards or Natural Dying Living Will Cards for religious observers (2011)--to generate a personalized Natural Dying--Living Will. The cards/items use plain, straightforward descriptions with almost no medical jargon. Illustrative line drawings enhance the clarity of informing people what it is like to live with Advanced Dementia and other terminal illnesses so they can make decisions one symptom at a time. The resulting legal Living Will can be even more effective if combined with other recommended forms for an ''ironclad strategy.''
For all his work, Dr. Terman appreciates the extensive critical editing and numerous practical suggestions from his colleagues--prominent health care attorneys and clinical bioethicists.
Dr. Terman has been invited to give workshops around the world. In 2010, he went to Australia twice to present My Way Cards, once as an invited keynote speaker.
He lives in Carlsbad-by-the-Sea with his wife, Beth, with whom he takes daily walks with their three Pomeranian dogs while listening to music. He feels blessed with three wonderful children and three grandchildren.
Review
Millions who will be suffering from Alzheimer's and related dementias may receive treatment inconsistent with their preferences and values, treatment that may inflict longer and greater suffering. If you do not want this to happen to you, read this book! It offers a unique Advance Care Planning tool that offers substantial advantages over all alternatives.
--Thaddeus Mason Pope, JD, PhD, Widener University School of Law
Dr. Terman has had the courage to formalize a protocol for patients with Advanced Dementia whose quality of life is extremely low. [One form] explicitly lists Palliative Sedation as a method of Comfort Care for informed consent [that can be used] if all other modalities of treatment have not been successful to reduce pain and suffering.
--William C. Fowkes, MD, Professor Emeritus, Stanford University School of Medicine
Dr. Terman's book is full of illustrative and very moving vignettes, wisdom, compassion, and a whole lot of nuts-and-bolts recommendations that will seem controversial to some, but compelling to others... He offers a comprehensive series of sequential, complementary actions (forms, medallions, cards, suggestions for recording interviews, etc.), which combine to provide a guarantee that is closer to 100% than any other, [for] Advance Care Planning.
--Karl E. Steinberg, MD, Past President, California Association of Long Term Care Medicine
Sorting My Way Cards is an interactive exercise that could be very valuable in helping people consider what is important to them... I encourage you to read, consider, and discuss this most thorough, most-important, and perhaps life-altering book. Kudos to Dr. Terman for his monumental efforts in bringing us this work.
--Guy Micco, MD, Clinical Professor U C Berkeley UC San Francisco Joint Medical Program
To ensure that patient preferences are honored and that physician orders are durable, Dr. Terman has thought of innumerable potential barriers for which he has devised strategic solutions... Ingeniously, he couples a specially designed Advance Directive with a set of Natural Dying Physician's Orders (NDPO).... Some advantages of the NDPO form include a recommendation for the implementing physician to consider important safeguards [since] Dr. Terman advocates strongly against ending life prematurely.
Doctor Terman writes with compassion, passion, clarity, and expertise. His patient stories are compelling and illustrative. Ironically, a book about how to end life is really one that empowers readers to prolong meaningful and enjoyable life.
--Ronald B. Miller, MD, FACP, Founding Director of the Program in Medical Ethics, U C Irvine
Natural Dying Living Will Cards (for religious observers) enable patients or their health care proxies to discern if even hand/spoon feeding becomes for them in some circumstances an extraordinary or disproportionate means of preserving life. Without conflicting with Catholic teaching, they will permit you or your loved one to identify the sorts of circumstances in which hand feeding or other treatments could and legitimately should be refused, withheld or withdrawn.
Reverend Kevin McGovern, Director, Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics
--Excerpts from the Forewords
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherLife Transitions Publications
- Publication date2011
- ISBN 10 1933418273
- ISBN 13 9781933418278
- BindingPaperback
- LanguageEnglish
- Edition number2
- Number of pages224
- EditorMichael S Evans JD MSW, Guy Micco MD, Ronald B Miller MD, Thaddeus M Pope PhD JD, Karl E Steinberg MD CMD
- IllustratorWilliam Young
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