With the End in Mind

Through stories from her own practice, a palliative care doctor and therapist takes the reader on a journey through dying.Modern medical technology is allowing us to live longer and fuller lives than ever before. And for the most part, that is good news. But with changes in the way we understand medicine come changes in the way we understand death. Once a familiar, peaceful, and gentle — if sorrowful — process, death has come to be something from which we shield our eyes, preferring to fight desperately against it rather than accept its inevitability. Palliative care has a long tradition in Britain, where Dr. Kathryn Mannix has studied and practiced it for 30 years. In WITH THE END IN MIND, she shares beautifully crafted stories from a lifetime of caring for the dying. Weaving her own experiences as a caregiver through stories of her patients, their families, and their distinctive lives, Dr. Mannix reacquaints us with the universal, but deeply...