Choosing How to Die

My long-time friend, fellow nurse and writer, Lois Roelofs, has published an important book that will have an impact on maintaining quality of life while in the throes of having cancer. Sounds like an oxymoronic statement, doesn’t it?

Spending a good part of my many years in nursing caring for patients at the end of their lives, I know Lois’ book is needed. Our society shuns the discussion of death. Our health care system puts effort and money in unproven lifesaving treatments at the expense of helping patients have a good death. Hospice, a program dedicated to assist patients to die pain free and with dignity is shunned by patients and family alike as a fast-track to death. Lois’ book attacks each of these erroneous beliefs.

Marv, Lois’ husband, challenged the authority of his medical caregivers. When he was told that he had an aggressive lung cancer and needed immediate treatment, he refused. He didn’t want to be sidelined with the debilitating side effects of cancer therapies with the time he had left. Instead, he planned to visit family and friends to personally say good-bye. Lois supported this decision. She also granted Marv’s wish that after his death she would write a book about their journey.

Marv Taking Charge is well written with both humor and pathos. Marv and Lois show us how to challenge the medical authorities and how to follow our own path in living with a terminal diagnosis.

An essential lesson. An essential book.

Read the following from the Media Kit of Marv Taking Charge: A Story of Bold Love and Courage

About the book: Lois Roelofs always knew that Marv, her husband of fifty-five years, had strong convictions. So, when he was diagnosed with “very aggressive” small cell lung cancer, with a few weeks to a few months to live, she accepted that he wanted to die on his own terms―refuse chemo, choose quality of life over quantity, and die at home. She tells their story in a mix of personal notes, family and friend emails, and public blog posts written during Marv’s illness and her first months as a widow. At the time, she could find no personal accounts of refusing treatment and living with the resultant uncertainty.

Lois wrote this book to honor her husband Marv’s request to tell the story of their experience when he chose to refuse treatment for a diagnosis of small cell lung cancer. Family, friends, and readers of Lois’s blog in real time confirmed interest in the topic of refusing treatment. She wanted to show her readers that achieving patient autonomy, doing what’s right for them, is possible and, implicitly, to caution readers never to blindly follow medical advice.

Marv Taking Charge will be helpful to those facing a critical decision whether to treat a terminal illness. It will help answer questions such as 1) what can happen after the diagnostic visits, 2) when to sign up for hospice, 3) what can be expected from hospice, 4) how to spend the time during the uncertain period when all persons involved are waiting for the worsening of the patient’s illness, and 5) what can happen during the progression of the illness.

The main theme is patient autonomy, having the right to make decisions regarding care.

Marv Taking Charge: A Story of Bold Love and Courage is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble