Dying with Ease: A Compassionate Guide for Making Wiser End-of-Life Decisions

by Jeff Spiess

Overview

Death may be inevitable, but fearing the end-of-life is avoidable. Learn how to put your fear of your final days to rest.

We all know we are going to die, but live as though we don’t believe it. Rather than explore our options and consider the possibilities that can impact our final days, we ignore the idea altogether out of fear. By avoiding the topic of death, we increase the pain and grief we experience at the end of life, and the suffering of those left behind.

After three decades of caring for the dying, Dr. Jeff Spiess argues that if we honestly face our mortality, we will make wiser decisions, die with less distress, and live the remainder of our lives, whether days or decades, more fully and with less anxiety. Using cultural and religious references alongside poignant narratives, this optimistic work informs, inspires, and challenges our cognitive and emotional understandings of our own lives and deaths.

Dying with Ease contains the practical nuts and bolts information about advance care planning, hospice, palliative care, and ethical and legal issues surrounding dying in America. Dr. Spiess answers such questions as:

• How can I plan for the last part of my life?
• What options do I have if my suffering is unbearable?
• What do religion and spiritual philosophy have to say about dying?
• What does it feel like to die?

While dying can be difficult, it can also be beautiful. By learning to relax in the face of death at our current stage of life, we can make wiser and more authentic decisions throughout the rest of our lives— however long they may be.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781538141892
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/11/2020
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jeff Spiess, MD, is “mostly” retired as Associate Medical Director of Hospice of the Western Reserve. He has spent his medical career caring for those facing serious illness and death, first as an oncologist, then as a hospice physician, and he has been recognized as a leader in his field. He resides in Bay Village, Ohio, with his wife Pat and their rescued best friend Rico.

Editorial Reviews

08/31/2020

Spiess, a hospice physician, debuts with a soothing and thorough guide to the complexities of the end of life. Spiess notes that dying is “foreign territory” for most Americans, and, in an effort make the process more perceptible and less overwhelming, he asks readers to imagine the end of their own lives, stage by deteriorating stage, and discusses statistics, stories of patients, legal and ethical considerations, and references to literature about death. He covers essential topics, such as advance directives (fill them out), hospice (it’s helpful), suffering (much of it is psychological), and how finding meaning can relieve suffering. For instance, he considers the ethics around assisted death activist Brittany Maynard’s decision to take her own life: “Years of medical practice,” Spiess writes, “have taught me that the only person who can define their ‘own terms’ for valuing life is the person who is living that life.” The eclectic bibliography—including professional literature, such as the New England Journal of Medicine, as well as literary and humanistic works—adds to this guide’s usefulness. Readers dealing with end-of-life care (for themselves or loved ones) will find wisdom in Spiess’s wide-ranging work. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly