Alleviation of Suffering, Patient Rights, Hospice, Palliative Care

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Stay, Breathe with Me is an empathetic and altruistic work based on the medical and personal experience of the palliative care coordinator of one of Canada's first hospices. The book represents an expose, a challenge to paternalism, and a tool of insight and empowerment that demonstrates how the management of pain and the alleviation of suffering are fundamental to our human rights. The book continues along the same path as Bernie Siegel's Love, Medicine and Miracles by honoring patients and prizing their contribution as teachers, equal partners, and heroes. But while Siegel's work focuses on helping individuals when physical healing is still possible, Stay, Breathe with Me travels deeper into the realm of terminal illness, into the struggle against pain and anguish, to show how we can alleviate suffering when cure is no longer possible.

"A hospital is full of wonderful and terrible stories, and if I were a doctor I would read them as one reads good fiction and let them educate me."

- - - Anatole Broyard, Intoxicated by My Illness

In this same spirit, Stay, Breathe with Me presents the voices and stories of the critically ill as a gift of wisdom from which we can learn. Rich with tenderness, courage and hope, and with moments of great love and humor, the book leads readers through the pitfalls of institutional care, unmet expectations, and unremitting pain. Patient voices reveal the wisdom that provides meaning, purpose, and direction for altruistic humanitarian care, and illuminate the issues of:

* the humanitarian principles of palliative care

* the complex nature of suffering and psychosocial pain

* the management of advanced pain

* institutional care that is contrary to palliation

* paternalism and medical myths

* how negation and silence exacerbate suffering

* the damaging effects of ignorance and fear

* how palliative care functions in practice

* the role of the patient and the family

* patient rights, moral and ethical responsibilities

* the alleviation of suffering

In North American today, it's fair to say that concern about critical illness, suffering, and death has risen to the fore, exacerbated certainly by the crisis facing the half million Americans and Canadians who lose their struggle against cancer every year. Concern with quality health care and end-of-life comfort has never been greater. Yet despite this interest and the many books on illness, death and dying, there is a scarcity of information about compassionate care and the alleviation of suffering. In what is surely the greatest crisis to befall us, that of terminal illness, we are thrust into a medical world, a world that focuses on cure not on care, a world of which we know very little. Where is our road map?

Timely and essential, Stay, Breathe with Me offers medical information and real-life experience to advocate pain management, whole-person comfort care, and the recognition of patients as key partners in end-of-life support. Written for patients, family members, and caregivers, here is a work that raises awareness of the issues in terminal illness and offers hope in facing this ultimate challenge.

Stay, Breathe with Me is the result of a mother-daughter collaboration. The daughter, Irene Allison, is a technical writer and novelist who also teaches at Simon Fraser University. The mother, Helen Allison, has over thirty years of experience in the health services as a nurse, palliative care consultant, medical social worker, and advocate for quality patient care. She is senior author of the publication, Social Work as a Component of Palliative Care (1983), reprinted in 1990, by the Haworth Press. Over the decades, Helen has been actively sought out as a guest radio speaker and seminar leader on the topics of pain management, grief, and loss.

Stay, Breathe with Me lifts the veil of silence on a tragedy that concerns us all by illuminating the need for humility and compassion in the struggle against meaningless pain and anguish at life's end. Dedicated to those who have fought, and who will fight, against the immorality of human suffering, here is a book that invites each and every one of us to take command and to protest against the paternalistic treatment of the seriously ill.

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