Death is a clear-cut objective moment, but the process of dying and the choices we make for our own death and others is a wholly different subject. Not becoming educated on your ability to influence your dying process is leaving that potentially long helpless period to fate. Raw and informative, this book explores the truth and asserts your right to knowledge and your right to say "No" to medical procedures that ultimately only prolong suffering once imminent and inevitable death arrives.

What can be done to decrease unnecessary suffering before inevitable death? This suffering is almost always influenced by a fear or lack of acceptance of death. For the most part the healthcare field cannot stop this pain and suffering due to many influences beyond its control, unless you know how to protect yourself. Ultimately, it is up to the patient or their medical guardian to ensure a peaceful and dignified death.

It is obvious Vincent cares deeply about your awareness, knowledge, and choices, as well as your control of your body and your own health care. He cares to see your fears of this often dark and taboo subject decreased and hopefully alleviated. His professional and personal caring perspectives come from twenty-one years of bedside emergency and intensive care nursing in teaching hospitals, followed by fourteen more years of advocating for both the dying and the living to pilot their own health care. He takes a look at an

otherwise bitterly-avoided subject that we all must face and turns it into a highly informative, easy, and at times even funny to read.

There is a sweet icing on this normally hard-to-stomach cake known as dying, death, and grief: the author also has some great input on how not only to stay alive longer, but to feel more alive.

Vincent Dodd