“This country is fairly crowded with doctors, families, and
patients—all possessed of good intentions—failing to achieve
the simple goal of allowing people to die with dignity and
grace.”
In the 1970s, most Americans died swiftly and brutally: of
heart attacks, strokes, cancer, or in accidents. But in the
past three decades, medical advances have extended our lives
and changed the way we die. In The Most Important Time In
Your Life, Stephen Kiernan reveals the disconnect between
how patients want to live the end of life—pain free,
functioning mentally and physically, surrounded by family
and friends—and how the medical system continues to treat
the dying—with extreme interventions, at immense cost, and
with little regard to pain, human comforts, or even the
stated wishes of patients and families.
Backed with surveys, interviews, and intimate portraits of
people from all walks of life, from the dying and their
families to the doctors and nurses who care for them, this
book will be for our time what Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s books
were for a previous generation.
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