Recommendation
prolog

PART 1 Dying in a Hospital: Stories for a Humane Death
1.
What my father knew but I didn't
-The last moments of two young soldiers
-A very different story about life
-Natural life and death encountered at the neighborhood clinic
It would be no exaggeration to say that I am alive by accident.

2.
What a trivial life
-He died and I lived, just by one second.
-Living in a crazy world where anything can happen at any time
When did the attitude of avoiding death begin?
-Again, on the path to becoming a doctor

3.
What We Lose While Trying to Avoid Death
-When you need affection the most in life
-What ordinary people gradually lose as they become medical students
-The cold and indifferent way in which death is dealt with in hospitals
Questions for a Humane Death

4.
How a life-threatening illness can change your life
What my close encounter with cancer left me with
-What kind of care is needed for a sick person?
-Between life and death, the moment when precious things reveal themselves
-If you have to send someone you love first

5.
There is no such thing as a dramatic revival.
-People who cannot die comfortably even after living their entire lives
-The one truth doctors are reluctant to tell
-The reason our hearts stop is because it's time for us to leave.
-What I realized after killing my first patient

6.
What kind of ending will you prepare?
-What the emergency room and life have in common
-When life starts to deviate from averages and statistics
-People who bet everything on a 1 percent chance
-What kind of ending will you prepare?

PART 2: Facing My Father's Death: Stories for a Life Without Regrets
7.
What kind of story will my life be remembered as?
-“What’s the point of living like this?”
-If you listen to the words of a person facing death
-The reason he revealed the secret he had kept for 80 years at the last moment
-What kind of story will my life be remembered as?

8.
About a day a dying person lives
Why hospice is full of joy
- Even in dark moments, joy exists.
-What makes you waste your precious time?
-Let go of baseless fears and create concrete hopes.

9.
Even if I die tomorrow, I'll play bridge today!
-When you feel like you've reached a dead end
-Life doesn't always go as planned.
-Even if I die tomorrow, I'll play bridge today!
-Don't rashly decide that it's the end while you're alive.

10.
On Wise Giving Up and Good Choices
-About the desperate desire to grab even a straw
The man who only followed the doctor's instructions made his final choice.
-Fuck, when I die, I want to die the way I want to die.
-What attitude will you choose?

11.
To the foolish and beautiful people who give everything to a trivial life
-Life, love, and sadness are all just a moment in the end
-The moment I felt his pain was like mine
-A sadness that only a loved one can understand
-To the beautiful people who do not give up on love

12.
What my father's last journey left behind
-The comfort that only nature can provide
There comes a time when it doesn't matter whether you've lived a good life or a bad one.
-The reason my father went on his last journey
- Things only change when you accept your fate

13.
The force that ultimately keeps us alive
How to Make an Ordinary Life Great
-Things that remain after death
-The miracle that happens when small and weak people take care of each other

14.
Before My Father's Death: Stories He Left Behind

15.
A life for the things that truly matter
Looking back on my yesterday, which I habitually spent carelessly
To live today more deeply and passionately
I will go forward to the end with love and courage in my heart.

Acknowledgements

“To the foolish and beautiful people who give everything to a life that is nothing special.”
-For us who still don't know how to live even as we grow older
Heartwarming Stories from People on the Verge of Death

No building is more surrounded by fear and taboo than a hospice.
People often think of hospice wards as cliffs where life's story ends abruptly, and that coming here means experiencing nothing but plummeting to death.
So people ask the author, a hospice specialist:
“How do you endure something like that?”

But hospices are full of people who know they will die, but who are doing their best to live the rest of their lives.
Because terminally ill patients are well aware that time is limited, they do the things they've always wanted to do, reach out to loved ones, and savor the moments they have left.
The good qualities of human nature exist in their most refined form: kindness and smiles, dignity and joy, kindness and courtesy, love and compassion.
So the author says:
Ironically, the place that helped me grow as a doctor and as a human being was the hospice, which most people avoid and fear.

Only when patients enter hospice do they realize that life exists even on the path to death.
One day, Simon, a 60-year-old patient with thyroid cancer, was brought to the hospice by ambulance because the tumor was compressing his airway and making it difficult for him to breathe.
There is nothing more painful than having your prayers blocked.
All the spiritual powers of man crumble helplessly before the desperate longing for air.
Simon also arrived here convinced that he would die soon.
The author details to a terrified Simon what his life will be like in the weeks ahead.
Contrary to expectations, the painful symptoms are mostly manageable with medication, you gradually lose energy and end up taking long naps, and you have to save your energy for really important things.
Simon, after first assessing the form, manner, and time of death, said:

“Maybe I can last until our little one’s birthday.
Thank you, Rachel.
“I’m serious.”

Simon had a grandson whom he wanted to be a father figure for after his son-in-law left the family, and that was the most important thing in his life.
In the end, he gathered all his remaining time and energy and quietly ended his life two days later, without fear or regret, after throwing his grandson his last birthday party.

Even in the day that a dying person lives, there are surprisingly sweet moments.
As long as we are alive, we can still laugh, admire, love, rejoice, and enjoy all that life has to offer in a more concentrated way.
So patients live their lives as best they can until the very last moment.
That's why we learn everything we need to know to survive from them.


How to Make Ordinary Life Great
-The meaning of life and the value of love that I finally realized after losing my father.

In a crowded emergency room on a Friday night, Michael, an octogenarian, sat curled up with his arms wrapped around his chest.
He fidgeted and muttered, his voice trailing off as he released his arm.
“Oh, I should have come earlier….
“That’s the problem.”
To his surprise, what he was carefully cradling in both hands was a pacemaker (a device implanted in the chest to prevent sudden cardiac arrest in people with heart disease).
A few weeks ago, after a simple procedure to replace the pacemaker battery, the inflammation left behind had ruptured and the pacemaker had protruded from the scar, exposing her ribs.
As a doctor, I couldn't understand how someone with a heart-related problem could be neglected like this.


But there was something more important to Michael than his heart.
It was my wife who had been with me for 60 years.
Michael has been Mary's caregiver since she was diagnosed with dementia three years ago.
He fed, clothed, washed, and comforted his wife all by himself.
If he gets hospitalized, who will take care of Mary?
Even as he lay in the emergency room, his heart ached more for Mary than for his own heart, who must have been trembling in fear without even knowing what was happening.


As Michael did, even as death looms and the patient and caregivers struggle to see and protect their loved ones.
As I've witnessed countless times in the hospice of Death Star, in the moments leading up to the end, nothing matters but love.
Physical pain, such as pain, delirium, nausea, and fever, can be relieved with medication.
However, the pain of leaving behind things we have cherished throughout our lives and the pain of being cut off from the world we have loved so passionately can only be healed through relationships with others.
Love is at the core of human life.

Therefore, those who choose love cannot avoid the pain of loss.
Grief is the pain of eternal separation from a loved one, the price of love, and it can never be alleviated.
The author confesses that he realized this fact through his father's death.
My father, who worked his entire life as a community health specialist in rural Wiltshire, was a role model for me both as a doctor and as a person.
When my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer, all the expertise and judgment he had accumulated in the field of palliative care disappeared.
He had always prided himself on knowing better than anyone else in the world how to face death with steadfast determination, but when his father died, he found himself struggling in the depths of despair.
Only then did I notice the sad faces of the families clinging to the precious lives of their loved ones who would soon have to leave.
I have come to understand that grief, like love, is something we cannot do anything about, and that the only way to avoid the pain of grief is ultimately not to love.


-What my father's last journey left behind

On the other hand, my father, who was the one who died, did not cower or cover his face in pain even while being conquered by cancer cells.
Instead, he raised his head and looked up at the sky.
My father had nothing left to lose in his one and only precious life.
So I set off on my last journey into the rugged mountains.
The flight of a white-tailed eagle, lobster marinated in garlic butter, red deer and quartz… All of these were especially moving and precious to my father because they were his last.
My father savored every moment with joy, without wallowing in self-pity.
Before he died, my father said this.

“You could waste the rest of your days wondering, ‘Why me? Why me?’
But if you think about it, I, no, we have been dying from the moment we were born.
But until you cross the threshold of death, you are still alive.
So I'm just going to live my life quietly.”

Death is an unknown path that no one has ever traveled.
Not only the patient but also those watching cannot help but feel fear.
But if a person facing death accepts his or her impending fate with dignity, if he or she decides to enjoy all the pleasures of life to the fullest rather than fear death, the resonance of such an attitude is considerable.
And even more so if that person is your beloved father.
The author confesses that by watching his father accept death and savor the remaining days more deeply and passionately, he was able to become a slightly better doctor and human being.


Stories for a life without regrets and a humane death
-From journalist to hospice specialist,
A doctor's intense struggles and warm practices to see beyond illness to humanity.

This book tells the story of a journalist who made current affairs documentaries on various topics, including the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Al Qaeda, and the Congolese civil war, and then turned into a hospice specialist.
Journalism is exciting and powerful because every time a program airs, a story reaches millions of people.
But in the process, persuading, guiding, and manipulating people was commonplace.
They say the ends justify the means, but at some point it felt like it was eating away at my soul.
After much thought, the author decided to become a doctor who saves people directly, and entered medical school at a late age.

However, an inhumane atmosphere was also prevalent in the medical field.
Of course, the author was fascinated by the role of medicine in saving lives and the lives of doctors who dedicate themselves day and night to this cause.
He even volunteered to work in the emergency room, a job that others would avoid because it was too burdensome.
But, in the midst of being obsessed with the goal of saving lives, the lives of patients in the hospital disappeared.
There were organs that needed to be repaired instead of people, and the patients' lives were reduced to shame and disease.
Doctors, exhausted from their hard work, were indifferent to the confusion and suffering of their patients, and patients who were incurable were easily thrown away.
Having witnessed countless deaths so ugly and cruel that they could not be ignored in hospitals, the author realized that the process of death is as important as curing the disease, and decided to specialize in palliative care.


The author says:
Dying and living are not binary opposites, and the two can coexist.
A hospital should be a place where a wife can lie beside her dying husband and offer him warmth, a place where the doors are wide open to a teenager who brings pizza to watch a movie with his beloved father before he leaves, a place where pets are welcome.
As I read the author's story of how she has done everything she could to help her patients end their lives the way they wanted, I realized she was the epitome of the doctor we all longed to meet.
So, one Amazon reader left this review:
“If I can’t die at home, I want to die in the hospice where Rachel works.”