Living With Dying: A Guide for Relatives and Friends

This book is about dying. It is also about living. It is based on the author’s research from interviews with more than six hundred critically and terminally ill patients, their families and friends, and the health care personnel who served them. He has written the book for relatives and friends of seriously ill patients to help them better understand the emotional needs of their loved one and respect their own feelings as well. "What should I do?" "What is expected of me?" "Should I be feeling this way?" These questions, and others, are among the queries relatives and friends have when someone dear to them is in health crisis. Answers given in the book are tentative, though based on empirical data. Each of us has opinions about how best to help a patient cope with dying. Yet, it is the patient who must finally judge which answers are appropriate to questions generated by his crisis. The answers given here are tentative, not only because there is still so much to learn, but because ea