Oxford University Press Life to be lived: Challenges and choices for patients and carers in life-threatening illnesses

How do people face life-limiting illness and death? This challenging question is discussed in-depth in Life to be Lived by looking at the feelings, hopes, fears and stresses associated with life-threatening illness, often experienced by patients and their carers. Drawn from personal research and clinical experience, the authors, who work in bereavement counselling and palliative care, examine the process of adjustment that patients and their families go through nearer the end of life. Case-based examples from counsellors, chaplains, and carers provide an accessible and candid look at the challenges that both patients and carers face when dealing with options from symptom and pain control, communicating the appropriate information to families, to adjusting to the psychosocial implications of being ill. Life to be Lived is essential reading for professionals and trained volunteers who work as a part of multidisciplinary teams in palliative and end of life care to improve understanding of the attitudes and behaviour of their patients. Families and friends will also benefit from the book as they try to come to terms with their own situations and how they can cope better with them. This publication offers an inspiring way for people in contemporary society to review death as part of life. David Oliviere, St Christopher's Hospice