The Needs of the Dying: A Guide For Bringing Hope, Comfort, and Love to Life's Final Chapter

In gentle, compassionate language, The Needs of the Dying helps us through the last chapter of our lives. Author David Kessler has identified key areas of concern: the need to be treated as a living human being, the need for hope, the need to express emotions, the need to participate in care, the need for honesty, the need for spirituality, and the need to be free of physical pain. Examining the physical and emotional experiences of life-challenging illnesses, Kessler provides a vocabulary for communication with doctors, with hospital staff, and with each other, and-at a time when the right words are exceedingly difficult to find-he helps readers find a way to say good-bye. Using comforting and touching stories, including new accounts about Michael Landon and Anthony Perkins, he provides information to help us meet the needs of a loved one at this important time in our lives.

David Kessler is getting to be one of the most well known experts on hospice, palliative end-of-life care and grief and loss today by reaching hundreds of thousands of people through his books.

The Needs of the Dying: a guide for bringing hope, comfort and love to life’s final chapter, is often one of the best-selling hospice books and was originally published in 1997 in hard cover and audio by HarperCollins. The book was praised by Mother Teresa, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D. (his mentor) and Marianne Williamson, and was a finalist for "Best Book of 1997 by a New Author" It is has now been translated and published in over 11 countries worldwide.

He is also written two books with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D, Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living (Simon and Schuster) and the upcoming, On Grief and Grieving (to be released in 2005, Simon and Schuster)

This new edition of The Needs of the Dying includes updated and expanded interviews with Michael Landon’s son, Christopher and Anthony Perkins, wife, Berry in which they share more of their story for the first time publicly and share advice for others.

David has helped thousands of men, women and children face life and death with peace, dignity and courage. His experiences have taken him from Auschwitz concentration camp to Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying Destitute in Calcutta. His services have been used by Elizabeth Taylor, Jamie Lee Curtis and Marianne Williamson when their loved ones faced life challenging illnesses. He also worked with Anthony Perkins, Michael Landon and industrialist Armand Hammer when they faced their own deaths

He is no stranger to disaster and trauma. He has worked on disasters with mass casualties, loss and grief. As a volunteer, he has served as a member of the Red Cross’s Aviation Disaster team and was called in to help with the Aspen plane crash. He has also worked with the next of kin as well as the survivors on the Singapore Airlines crash. David also volunteers his time as a Special Reserve Police Officer on one of the nations largest Police Trauma Team.

David takes his experiences and turns them into inspiring and motivational lectures for audiences around the world. He also teaches therapists, doctors and nurses on grief and loss and leads a support groups for people with cancer. In his daily work, he is Director of Palliative Care for Citrus Valley Health Partners, which has three hospitals and home hospice as well as a freestanding award winning in-patient hospice unit in the Los Angeles area with over 900 physicians and 2,000 nurses.

His work has been discussed in the "Los Angeles Times", the "New York Times", "Business Week" and "Life Magazine", and has been featured on CNN-Cross Fire, NBC, MSNBC, PBS, "Entertainment Tonight" and "Sally Jessy Raphael." He has written articles on end of life care for the Boston Globe and The San Francisco Chronicle.