To die well : your right to comfort, calm, and choice in the last days of your life

When should futile medical treatment be stopped? When and how can death be hastened? How can each of us keep control of these decisions? Two doctors offer a guide for terminal patients to help them take control of their final days and die with dignity. Knowing our rights to refuse treatment, and ways to bring death earlier if pain or distress cannot be alleviated, will spare us the frightening helplessness that can rob our last days of meaning and personal connection. Drs. Wanzer and Glenmullen clarify what patients should insist of their doctors, including the right to enough pain medication even if it shortens life. Everyone needs their wise and comforting advice. “Superb. . . . In clear, practical terms it explains what you can do to achieve the peaceful death everyone wants but too few people have.” —Marcia Angell, MD, former editor of The New England Journal of Medicine “Wanzer was one of the first mainstream U.S. physicians to advocate openly both for the improvements in palliative care for all dying patients and for more choice about hastening death if suffering becomes intolerable. Those who want to learn more about all of their potential end-of-life options would do well to read this book.” —Timothy E. Quill, MD, author of Death and Dignity: Making Choices and Taking Charge “Important for both patients and clinicians.” —David S. Rosenthal, MD, Harvard Medical School, Past President, American Cancer Society “Anyone planning for end-of-life care will benefit from this book. Pearls of wisdom include discussion of the right to stop unwanted treatment . . . the need for hospice care to be started much earlier . . . and the proper dose of an analgesic being the amount necessary to relieve suffering patients’ pain.” —Choice "A leader in the rigiht-to-die movement, Wanzer advocates measures that allow patients to control decisions about end-of-life treatment and ensure a peaceful death. With the help of Harvard Medical School faculty member Glenmullen (The Antidepressant Solution), Wanzer, himself the former head of Harvard University Law School Health Services, provide clear legal and medical guidelines for the terminally ill and their loved ones who are facing these decisions"--Publishers Weekly Provides clear legal and medical guidelines for the terminally ill and their loved ones who are facing end-of-life decisions, covering such topics as how to appoint a health care proxy, refuse unwanted treatments, and the controversial issue of hastening the death of terminally ill patients.