Notes from the Waiting Room: Managing a Loved One's End-Of-Life Hospitalization (Includes Choosing End-Of-Life Care Without Hospitalization)

Act effectively during a loved one's end of life...more control; less heartache; right closure.

Notes from the Waiting Room offers unique contributions to American families. Written from a lay person's experience, research, and perspective, Bart Windrum speaks to lay people about crucial end-of-life issues in a clear and direct way...in a way that institutions and professionals either overlook or are unwilling to bring to life.

Protect vanishing precious moments.

This one-of-a-kind conversation dissects and clarifies hospitalization experiences, and discusses end-of-life choices. For every patient-family entering the end-of-life crucible.

It is possible that a loved one's terminal hospitalization and demise will go smoothly, with well-considered communication, excellent treatment, and compassionate care for the patient and family alike altogether, a humane container for a loved one's passing.

It is possible that your patient-family will experience exactly the opposite absent or dysfunctional communication, problematic treatment, and a dispassionate absence of care that feels like abandonment. These conditions result in needless shock and harm, and a lingering, additional sense of loss.

Notes from Bart Windrum: Every hospitalization is serious. Any hospitalization can become very serious. End-of-life hospitalizations are particularly challenging especially those that turn suddenly terminal.

During end-of-life hospitalization, only two things really matter: protecting and using every available opportunity to commune with your loved one, and obtaining treatment direction from your loved one. These opportunities can be infringed upon. They can and do vanish. If we don't utilize them, our loss deepens, lingering in our hearts and souls with additional weight. How can your patient-family avoid this outcome? By learning how to eliminate needless and detrimental systemic shocks.

Notes from the Waiting Room focuses primarily on understanding how hospitals really function and how patient-families can effectively function within them. Notes' major topics include:
-- how to be an effective personal representative
-- the essential legal documents
-- the distinction between treatment versus care and how that affects us
-- forecasting future events and minimizing needless, harmful shocks
-- obtaining decision-making assistance and family support from hospital personnel
-- a potpourri of hospital how-to's
-- a complete, in-depth, one-of-a-kind discussion about quandaries related to the intersection of patient directives, treatment goals, and provider prerogative around the application of resuscitation technologies
-- the nature and realities of hospitalized dying.

Additionally, Notes offers a comprehensive discussion about how to consider, and perhaps arrive at, a decision to choose end-of-life care without hospitalization. Have we struck an unexamined Faustian bargain? Does using medical technology to extend our lives imply a requirement to die in the hospital or nursing home? The Option to Die in PEACE (Patient Ethical Alternative Care Elective) offers a framework for choosing a non-institutionalized end-of-life pathway.

Notes concludes with fourteen concrete medical reform proposals, an annotated bibliography, thoughts for healthcare providers, and a 38-page index. A 70-page companion eBook, How to Efficiently Settle the Family Estate, is available at the AxiomAction website, as is more information about both books.

Acting on any one of this book's revelations will save your patient-family from angst and heartache that can linger for years afterward.

Bart Windrum functioned as a key family member and Medical Power of Attorney during the demise of his parents in 2004 and 2005. Repetitive disturbing and harmful experiences during two three-week terminal hospitalizations inspired him to examine, research, contemplate, and clarify the nature of hospitalized dying in America from the patient-family perspective. While writing Notes from the Waiting Room, Bart authored The Option to Die in PEACE: Patient Ethical Alternative Care Elective, one of 31 healthcare initiatives considered by the State of Colorado's Blue Ribbon Commission for Health Care Reform. See the AxiomAction website for more information.