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BOOK REVIEW

kind, generous and loving, they realize the reality: that she couldn’t leagues sympathetic and merciful, or did all of those terms apply? I
be that person again. Permission was granted to allow her to die. don’t know the answer to that question, but this book made me think
This story was both heartbreaking and reassuring at the same time. much more deeply about an incident from more than forty years ago
A number of different terms and euphemisms for “assisted death” than I had at the time.
are discussed. Do you know the difference between “physician as- Dr. Warraich intersperses his various chapters with personal an-
sisted suicide,” and “euthanasia”? Can you define “comfort measures ecdotes and observations that bring a touch of humanity to what
only,” “withdrawing treatment,” “terminal sedation,” and “terminal otherwise could have been a somewhat dry and didactic read. Many
dehydration?” How many of you have had anything to do with letting of the stories are like illustrative case reports that are approached
an old, sick, debilitated, demented patient die rather than taking some with a level of sympathy and empathy which told me that he has a
action that would have extended their “life?” Could you have been maturity in his ability to interact with patients and their families which
indicted for murder? Did you even think about that? It has happened. is far above his current age of about 30.
How about the nurse who, one late night when I was an or- In sum, I feel that this is a wonderful book that should cause every-
thopaedic resident doing a consult in the Medicine ICU, told me that one who reads it to reflect on what he or she would have done (or
a different patient wasn’t doing well, had no future, and that the might yet have to do) if faced with a situation of a loved one in the
nurses had informally decided to “…make haste slowly…” if the in-between state of “life” and “death” described here. Further, I
alarms went off in the patient’s room? Was she breaking a law or think it is a book that is pertinent to almost every physician in clinical
some standard of ethical nursing behavior, or were she and her col- practice, no matter his or her specialty.

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