Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures, and the Patient with a Serious Illness, 6th Ed.

There is some great advice in this quick read booklet. We underlined items we wanted our adult kids to know about our wishes. Great item to pass on to your heirs to help them know and carry out your end of life wishes.

I send copies of this book to everyone caring for a loved one. The author shows compassionate understanding of how and why loving end of life decisions are made. Everyone trying to decide what steps to take to fill out your own choices should read this, also.

Direct discussion & advise for all aspects of end of life issues, respectful of religious traditions & rituals but also concrete and practical. Perfect reference for creating personal medical directive and last testament. Excellent tour guide for processing & sharing tough issues. I bought a stack of these to pass around. Well written & organized, compassionate and informative, no agenda or bias.

This is a wonderful little book to read to help you draft an advance health care directive that meets your needs instead of a boiler plate one. Easy to read and understand, and clearly explains to pros and cons of many hard decisions.My only gripe is that the supposedly new copy I received was filthy. The cover was covered in grime front and back. Luckily the type of paper allowed me to use a damp sponge with scrubber to clean it.

The specialists said my husband would be OK, but he died. I was a novice caregiver, and needed a lot of help. This book gave me practical information about procedures that could be used to prolong life, or as I thought, to regain health, as specialists said. It also gave excellent and appreciated adivce about attitudes toward death.Where it failed is in its discussion of palliative care and hospice. These programs are in trouble just as is the entire medical care system. None of the doctors I contacted wanted to talk about palliative care. They only wanted to talk about hospice (no attempt to get better), and today after 3 weeks since death of my beloved husband, no one from hospice has contacted me about counseling, nothing. I got one call to tell me he had passed away and a pastor came to pray with me, PERIOD. Some friends recounted hospice stiies from long ago, and in small communities, where good things happened, but today in urban areas, NO.The book is worth reading, but do not believe what it says about hospice.

This has helped me to think about my husband's end-of-life needs. It was recommended to me by a palliative care nurse practitioner. My husband isn't in need of hospice yet, but I expect to turn to this book when we need to consider it.

This is an exceptional book. Its information on the efficacy of the various interventions routinely given to terminally ill patients is a real eye opener. You will never view nutritional support, hydration, respirators, CPR, etc. in the same way. I bought two copies for our minister, one for her and one to loan to needy families. Every minister, church and hospital should keep several copies on hand.

My Dad is in a nursing g home as of June 2020. I've had to make some decisions, for example, no feeding tube. I felt terrible but my dad stopped eating and is only existing on nutritional drinks. He lost a great amount of weight. Reading this book has guided me and helped me understand the body's natural progression to begin shutting down. The decisions that I need to make won't be any easier but with the help of what Hank Dunn wrote in his book I will understand why I need to make that specific decision. I want my dad to be as comfortable as possible, in this, his last journey.

This book gives clear, concise guidelines about the care choices likely to face people whose loved one is approaching death. It provides information about the real impact of CPR, tube feeding, and other procedures that I haven’t found elsewhere. I recommend this book for those who want to be prepared before the crisis hits.