Crossing Over Narratives of Palliative Care

by Barnard, David; Towers, Anna M.; Boston, Patricia; Lambrinidou, Yanna

• ISBN13: 9780195123432
• ISBN10: 0195123433
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-03-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Crossing Over provides a unique view of patients, families, and their caregivers striving together to maintain comfort and hope in the face of incurable illness. The narratives weave together emotions, physical symptoms, spiritual concerns, and the stresses of family life, as well as the professional and personal challenges of providing hospice and palliative care. Based on a vast amount of participant-observation and in-depth interviews, Crossing Over moves far beyond dry technical manuals for symptom control, and tired clichés about death with dignity, to depict the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of the daily in patients homes and the palliative care unit. It captures the breathtaking diversity of people's aspirations and ideals as they face death, and the views of the professionals who care for them. Anger and fear, tenderness and reconciliation, jealousy and love, social support and falling through the cracks, unexpected courage and unshakable faith-- all of these are part of facing death in late twentieth-century North America, and this book brings them to life in an extraordinary portrait of the processes of giving and receiving palliative care.

Author Biography

Anna M. Towers, M.D. is Director of Palliative Care at McGill University Health Center in Montreal, Canada. She is also Associate Professor in the Departments of Medicine, Oncology, and Family Medicine at McGill University.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(16)
Part I: The Narratives	17	(378)
When the Storm of a Lifetime Hits in Mid-Dance	19	(17)
Raymond Hynes
Bonds Through Thick and Thin	36	(23)
Albert Hoffer
Burdens from the Past	59	(20)
Klara Bergman
The Price of a Death of One's Own	79	(18)
Frances Legendre
``Who Am I?''	97	(23)
Shamira Cook
``I'm Allowed to Be Happy Even Though I'm Dying''	120	(17)
Rose Picard
``I Want to Die at Home''	137	(14)
Victor Sloski
Jagged Edges	151	(26)
Leonard Patterson
Total Pain and the Despair of an Unlived Life	177	(19)
Miriam Lambert
A Question of Denial?	196	(16)
Sadie Fineman
``Like Lazarus, He Came Back from the Dead''	212	(21)
Stanley Gray
Trying to Live and Die Well	233	(17)
Martin Roy
``Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night''	250	(17)
Richard Johnson
``Do I Really Belong in a Hospice Program Yet?''	267	(23)
Jenny Doyle
A Study in Faith	290	(15)
Jasmine Claude
Living and Dying with God	305	(20)
Katie Melnick
A Private Matter	325	(15)
Susan Mulroney
``It Was Not a Peaceful Death''	340	(15)
Costas Metrakis
Death of a Child	355	(22)
Joey Court
Another Triumph of the Spiritual Over the Practical	377	(18)
Paula Ferrari
Part II: Working with the Narratives	395	(46)
Research Methods	397	(13)
Authors' Comments and Questions for Discussion	410	(31)
Bibliography	441	(8)
Index of Themes	449