Customer Reviews

A Death Prolonged: Answers to difficult end-of-life issues like code status, living wills,do not resuscitate, and the excessive costs of terminal ... that leads to suffering and financial waste.

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book presents a topic of extreme importance with both humor and intelligent story-telling skills. I have yet to meet someone who works in the medical field who has not been frustrated by the way end of life issues are dealt with and this book accomplishes making these seemingly daunting issues more accessible for the average individual. Bravo Mr. Gordon!

As a board-certified family physician, I cannot recommend this book highly enough to anyone that wants to understand the issues involved and decisions that need to be made regarding end-of-life care. Dr. Gordon presents a topic that many avoid talking about and makes it come alive through a well-written fictional narrative. All of the facts and statistics about end-of-life care, however, are up-to-date and accurate and are summarized in the Appendix at the end of the book for easy reference. Hopefully, this book will spur many Americans to have a dialogue with their loved ones.

My mother is beginning to go through the end-of-life issues described in Jeff's excellent book. Dr. Gordon not only educated me on the issues and my options on how to deal with them, he did so through the most powerful of all media: personal stories.

What a clever way to approach a difficult subject! Jeff Gordon created a fictional narrative about the challenges people face when confronted with end-of-life issues. He uses the viewpoint of a medical intern and the patients she treats as the context for getting his point across. I felt engaged in the storyline which made digesting the statistics and medical terms much easier. Like some of the characters in the story, my husband and I thought a Living Will covered all of our end-of-life wishes. We had no knowledge of Code status, DNR with medical intervention, or DNR with comfort care only. These are really difficult decisions that I do not want others to be faced making on behalf, nor do I wish to make them for my own parents. I'm hoping to share this book with my mom so we can have an honest talk about her end-of- life wishes. This is not a pleasant topic, but as this book stresses, it is too important to miss. I also appreciated the information this book provides about the absurd misuse of money to prolong death while the poor and underserved die needlessly. This seems like changeable problem that could greatly improve the dismal future of Medicare.

This book is a real eye opener and would recommend to anyone in health care, especially acute care. I could hardly put it down. I will be sharing this book with some of my friends to read. It is one of those books that carries its message loud and clear. It discusses addressing code status and that everyone should address it long before it may ever be needed.

I didn't realize how painful resusitation actually is and how often it fails. The statistics are dismal when the depressing reality of the significant percentage of failed resusitation efforts sink in.

We have the power to decide on if or what kind of resusitation efforts we want taken if we were to need them; that is if we take the proper steps to do it.

When we're talking about the health care system, you can expect everyone to get really confused and frustrated. This book's simple and engaging narrative lets readers of all kinds gain an understanding of some of the major health care issues facing us today. It's an quick read--I finished it in one afternoon. As a nurse, I see many people suffer as they receive unnecessary and expensive care due to a lack of communication. This issue badly needs some attention and this book makes it easy to start talking about.

very disapointed, I did not realize it was fictionalized, which in my view trivialized a subject extremly in need of a better understanding. this book was a total waste of money.