Dear Life: A Doctor's Story of Love and Loss
by: Rachel Clarke (0)
In Dear Life, palliative care specialist Dr. Rachel Clarke recounts her professional and personal journey to understand not the end of life, but life at its end.
Death was conspicuously absent during Rachel's medical training. Instead, her education focused entirely on learning to save lives, and was left wanting when it came to helping patients and their families face death. She came to specialize in palliative medicine because it is the one specialty in which the quality, not quantity of life truly matters.
In the same year she started to work in a hospice, Rachel was forced to face tragedy in her own life when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He'd inspired her to become a doctor, and the stories he had told her as a child proved formative when it came to deciding what sort of medicine she would practice. But for all her professional exposure to dying, she remained a grieving daughter.
Dear Life follows how Rachel came to understandāas a child, as a doctor, as a human beingāhow best to help patients in the final stages of life, and what that might mean in practice.
The Reviews
Despite the somewhat confronting subject matter and very moving accounts of various peoples demise, this book portrayed a very balanced and positive attitude towards life and death. To my surprise I was uplifted rather than depressed by it. I enjoyed it so much Iāve read it a second time
A former journalist, retrained as a physician, describes defining moments of her practice in a UK hospice and related family insights. It has a positive feel. She is a superb writer who had this article-reader (few books) glued to her book. I wholeheartedly recommend "Dear Life."
Quite simply everybody should read this book. I couldnāt put it down. Heartbreaking and heartwarming. If only there were more people like Dr Rachel Clarke on this planet.
I found this a very poignant read indeed.Rachel starts off being a journalist but then, a decade later, decides to retrain as a doctor, like her dad. Only she branches off into palliative care (a subject which is a bit of a fascination of mine, it has to be said).The stories of what it was like to be a brand new doctor trying to prove herself made me think, as I have been in that space myself. You just keep on pushing yourself and you think that if you have ALL the knowledge, you can fix anything. Unfortunately, human beings are tough but fragile and some things can't be fixed. Something which Rachel eventually realises (and me too).I cried when her dad was going through his cancer process as I had been through this with my mother and it breaks your heart to watch someone go through this and be able to do nothing to help. I loved the sections of the book where Rachel describes her patients and how she takes care of them at the hospice, thinking outside the square (and her colleagues too), which is what I would do too. I am not quite as imaginative, however!Disappointed by the lack of funding towards hospice though, because if I couldn't die at home, I would want to die in the kind of hospice that Rachel works in. Having to do fundraising just to keep these places open is unacceptable. It is about time that governments realise that hospices are sorely needed and dying is a part of life too. Do you really want to spend your last days on earth in some sterile hospital environment if you don't have to?I give this book 4.5 - marked down a little because of the unnecessarily complex language used. Not the medical terminology, just language generally. I get that the author was a journalist and a very smart person, clearly, but a little more plain language would be helpful at times.
My grandparents, father, brother, and father-in-law have all been plagued with cancer and entered hospice care. I really wanted to read this book to see it from the hospice doctors and nurses perspective. Rachel was a perfect representation of what can go on. Luckily, for all of us, our loved ones were at one of our homes and never had to enter a hospice center to pass away. My cousin didn't join hospice, she stayed in a unit at her main treatment hospital, and let me tell you, they went above and beyond delivering cookies, snacks, water, tea, coffee, on carts to her room to comfort her loved ones. It was a beautiful outreach that I give the hospital a lot of credit for. Rachel and her teams care for their patients went above and beyond and any family in their care are very blessed. It was very interested reading her going through this with her patients and her father at the same time. She really knew what to do for patients because she was going through the same thing those loved ones were going through. I highly recommend this book to see all sides and what caring for cancer patients (and their loved ones) and really like.I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, but the thoughts and ideas here are my own.
Very poignant and powerful read that will give much-needed perspective to all of us who haven't given my much thought to their own mortality or that of their loved ones. A truly heartfelt story of stories...
I have been close to so many people - father-in-law, brother-in-law, best friend, father, mother - as they've lived the last months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds of their lives. The experience of walking alongside those we love as they approach the end of their lives - their own personal universes - is such a privilege and so indescribably bittersweet. Knowing that one day I'll be taking that same road makes it even more so. This book is extraordinary in capturing and articulating the practicalities, the feelings of this profound and universal experience. I've seldom been so moved and inspired by a book, and I'd recommend it to anyone who will die one day - that is everyone
Refreshing, not to have to kow-tow to the Believers and True Believers among us
