Final Victory: Taking Charge of the Last Stage of Life, Facing Death on Your Own Terms

The purpose of this book is to show how patients, working with their families and physicians, can greatly reduce suffering at the end of life. Despite a desire not to linger while dying, many patients suffer because of excessive treatments that only prolong the dying phase. Even very knowledgeable patients and their families are unprepared to make decisions necessary to reduce end-of-life suffering because they are not emotionally or spiritually prepared to accept the inevitability of dying, and they don't know how to gain control over what is happening to them. This book is written as a guide to dying on your own terms through advance planning to limit futile and painful treatments and to obtain good relief of symptoms. You can't just do it at the end-you have to be prepared well in advance. It takes some work-mostly learning how to deal with doctors and your family-but it will help you to peaceful dying when the time comes. This book tells you how.