This book is meant to make hospice care the very best that it can be. Bringing in "chaplins, doctors, Dharma teachers, poets, and many different caregivers" along with the authors, the book hopes to enlighten us on what it means for pallative and end-of-life caregivers to successfully treat the whole patient and not just the outcome. It is a very important and valuable book, indeed.

I cried several times reading this. My grandma was in a home for "medicare" patients (those who couldn't afford the nice places). She was 104 when she finally was too sick and weak to eat or swallow. For 8 days, because she could not afford a hospice, she was starved to death. She had no food, water, feeding tube...only an I.V. and enough morphine so she would not moan. She felt pain every time the nurse and aid tried to reposition her. They weren't kind and made us "step out of the room". I could hear the agony in her voice up until the very last day when her veins were drying up and disappearing before my very eyes. I feel guilt, shame and helpless every time I think about it (all of the time). No doctors came to check on her. Most of the staff didn't even know she was dying!

I'm so glad the founders of the very first hospice wrote this book. This extremely important and valuable book should be assigned to all med students: will be doctors, nurses, nursing assistants, so they will treat the dying like real people that they are, and not some "duty" or a part of their "job" that they dislike. It should also be in the hands of all retirement homes that elderly poeple live in: all of the employees should read it. We all are going to die someday. I hope it is with dignity. I am so very grateful to have read this book, and will read it again!

Thank you to Koshin Paley Ellison and Matt Weingast, the authors, Wisdom Publications and NetGalley for giving me a free ARC copy of this book to read and give my honest review. ( )