Knocking on Heaven's Door

The Path to a Better Way of Death

By: Katy Butler

Narrated by: Katy Butler

Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

Like so many of us, award-winning writer Katy Butler always assumed her aging parents would experience healthy, active retirements before dying peacefully at home. Then her father suffered a stroke that left him incapable of easily finishing a sentence or showering without assistance. Her mother was thrust into full-time caregiving, and Katy became one of the 24 million Americans who help care for aging parents. In an effort to correct a minor and non - life threatening heart arrhythmia, doctors outfitted her father with a pacemaker. The device kept his heart beating but did nothing to prevent his slide into dementia, incontinence, near-muteness, and misery. After several years, he asked his wife for help, telling her, "I am living too long."

Mother and daughter faced a series of wrenching moral questions: When does death cease being a curse and become a blessing? Where is the line between saving life and prolonging a dying? When is the right time to say to a doctor, "Let my loved one go?"

When doctors refused to disable the pace-maker, sentencing her father to a protracted and agonizing death, Katy set out to understand why. Her quest had barely begun when her mother faced her own illness, rebelled against her doctors, refused open-heart surgery, and instead met death head-on. Knocking on Heaven's Door, a revolutionary blend of memoir and investigative reporting, is the fruit of the Butler family's journey.

With a reporter's skill, a poet's eye, and a daughter's love, Butler explores what happens when our terror of death collides with the technological imperatives of modern medicine. Her provocative thesis is that advanced medicine, in its single-minded pursuit of maximum longevity, often creates more suffering than it prevents. Butler lays bare the tangled web of technology, medicine, and commerce that modern dying has become and chronicles the rise of Slow Medicine - a growing movement that promotes care over cure.

Knocking on Heaven's Door is a visionary map through the labyrinth of a broken and morally adrift medical system. It will inspire the necessary and difficult conversations we all need to have with loved ones as it illuminates a path to a better way of death.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2013 Katy Butler (P)2013 Simon and Schuster

a must read

touching needs to be read a must......please share this book sooner then later, dont rehret what you could have done now, death is a cycle of life, we need to embrace it

The Absolute Truth!

As a retired Oncology/Hematology Registered Nurse, I totally agree with this author. I have always believed that quality of life is more important than quantity, especially when the patient is suffering. Over treatment of those with end stage terminal diseases and conditions usually leads to more suffering, pain, and disability. Our current society has been taught that death is something to fear, not a natural part of living. Hospice and Palliative Care are excellent options for both the patient and their families as we all must walk the path to death some day. Advance planning, legal forms, and talking to your children or relatives makes this trip so much easier for all. Thank you, Katy Butler, for being honest and writing this book.

Put on your must read list.

This book will help you and your family look realistically at end of life issues...or at least to begin the conversation.

A very generous book

This book provides so many gifts. I will be re-reading it soon I hope. It offered so much, I need to read it again just to absorb all the incredible insights.

It might just save your death.

Never have I felt more gratitude to an author whilst listening to her words. I usually think it is a bad idea for authors to narrate their own work but this prayerfully narrated audiobook is an exception. If you think you (or someone you know) might, at some point, die - and particularly if you don't think about such things - then this honest, generous and profoundly compassionate work is just for you.

It might just save your death.

Thank you for writing this book

Raw
Honest
Intimate
Much needed
The last , very practical chapter, could be a brochure for families and caregivers!

Important Reading For Everyone

This book is filled with critical information us all on finding good pathways to dying.

Essential Knowledge

Thank you, Ms. Butler, for sharing the story of your family's pain. This is an important read for all of us in the United States because at some point in our lives, we will be dealing with the same issues within the healthcare system.

great exploration of dying in America as a daughte

this was a great exploration of economic, spiritual, biological and emotional costs of ambiguous loss and what she described as ambiguous death in the United States. as someone conducting an independent study in my graduate program, I found this book validating other studies and reads as well as considering how death is pushed back due to fears and profits. wonderful narrator and poetic writings that I strongly recommend to all those who have questions with death and dying as it relates to caregiver will benefit from without the need for academic jargon or overwhelming verbage.

Important subject, but try it on speed listen

Very personal story, just found it a bit slow and kind of weirdly detailed. Like why do I need to know that it was a rented leaf blower??? And it seemed like people are either angels or devils, good or, well, heartless. This was a book group read and most really liked it. This was the first time I have used the adjustable speed function. Better at 1.5 speed, sometimes even faster.