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Letting Go

how to plan for a good death

Charlie Corke author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Scribe Publications

Published:12th Jul '18

Currently unavailable, our supplier has not provided us a restock date

Letting Go cover

Whatever your age, making key decisions about your medical care now can help you maintain your dignity and autonomy for as long as possible. In Letting Go, an expert explains why living well includes planning for life’s end.

Thanks to miraculous medical advances, we are now living longer and longer. But this means that many individuals are now faced with making complex medical decisions, for themselves and for others, in times of great stress. How far should doctors go when trying to prolong life? How can we decide what is ‘too far’ and ‘not far enough’?

Letting Go is an introduction to the kinds of decisions that we can all face in a medical crisis. It shows us how to start thinking about our end-of-life stage before we get there, and how to make an advanced care plan that will help people make decisions on our behalf.

Drawing on many years of experience as an intensive-care specialist, and writing with great insight and compassion, Dr Corke shows us all how we can do dying better.

‘A book to reflect on and contemplate as it has resonance for us as practitioners, human beings, and society as a whole.’

-- Dr Sarah Russell, Head of Research at Hospice UK

‘In crisp, clear prose Corke confronts the reader with the scenario most of us in Western society are likely to face after a period of declining health and function: ambulance, hospital, unconsciousness, no plan in place, family disagreements about treatment, escalation of medical intervention, and finally, our last days spent ‘‘connected to machines, cared for by strangers, and separated from family’’ … As a manual for how to avoid ending up in the ICU, in what one of Corke’s patients called ‘‘the bad bit at the end’’, Letting Go is a guide book for our age.’

-- Gail Bell * The Saturday Age *

‘This is a useful how-to manual for everybody who will at some point face death (which is of course all of us).’

* Weekend Australian *

‘We're not very good at talking about death in this country; this book should start a thousand conversations. Now that I've read it, I want to give it to everyone I know.’

-- Annabel C

ISBN: 9781911344858

Dimensions: 210mm x 135mm x 18mm

Weight: unknown

256 pages