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Book Review of Knocking on Heaven's Door: Our Parents, Their Doctors, and a Better Way of Death

Knocking on Heaven's Door: Our Parents, Their Doctors, and a Better Way of Death
reviewed on + 271 more book reviews


Interesting and informative. Yet I'm not sure how I feel about the book as a whole. The author discusses her career and herself as much as she talks about her parents. At times, I felt she was just wishing her father was dead, rather than struggling with health issues, that he was a big burden. Granted, she lived 3000 miles from the parents, making the care so much more difficult, expensive and time consuming for her. Still...I'm not sure how to feel about her role. However, she did a good deal of research on aging and its effects on the body and brain, which was informative. The bottom line is that he'd had a pacemaker installed, which they felt was keeping him alive artificially long after they felt he would have passed naturally. Therefore they were seeking a means to turn it off.