They Call Me Doctor Death

Too often we view death as an enemy to be denied, fought, and defeated, rather than as an inevitable and natural part of life. The medical establishment routinely buys into this view, promoting aggressive treatments by overselling technology and hope, which only prolong needless suffering for terminal patients and their families. But as this candid book shows, we don’t have to go down that path. As a long-time palliative and hospice care physician, Dr. Ken Pettit talks openly about a subject few of us want to discuss. His focus is not on prolonging life, but on helping terminal patients die “a good death,” with the best possible quality of life up to the end. Based on his work with hundreds of patients and families, as well as the life-altering experience of watching family and friends face death, Dr. Pettit illuminates, in the vivid detail that only an insider can provide, the failings of our medical establishment. He empowers us to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and prepare, with pro-active clarity, for our final days. This book will help all of us—patients, families, and medical professionals—break our collective silence about death, so we can develop better ways of discussing, treating, and encountering what we will all someday face.

Too often we view death as an enemy to be denied, fought, and defeated, rather than as an inevitable and natural part of life. The medical establishment routinely buys into this view, promoting aggressive treatments by overselling technology and hope, which only prolong needless suffering for terminal patients and their families. But as this candid book shows, we don't have to go down that path. As a long-time palliative and hospice care physician, Dr. Ken Pettit talks openly about a subject few of us want to discuss. His focus is not on prolonging life, but on helping terminal patients die "a good death," with the best possible quality of life up to the end. Based on his work with hundreds of patients and families, as well as the life-altering experience of watching family and friends face death, Dr. Pettit illuminates, in the vivid detail that only an insider can provide, the failings of our medical establishment. He empowers us to ask questions, challenge assumptions, and prepare, with pro-active clarity, for our final days. This book will help all of us-patients, families, and medical professionals-break our collective silence about death, so we can develop better ways of discussing, treating, and encountering what we will all someday face.

BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Jonathan Kellerman's Victims. Who killed the killer? In this brilliant and startling psychological thriller, Jonathan Kellerman, perennial bestselling author, gives a sharp and timely twist to homicide's central question. Someone has murdered euthanasia champion Dr. Eldon Mate--a self-styled Dr. Death responsible for scores of assisted suicides. In a burst of bloody irony, the killer chooses to dispatch the doctor in the back of Mate's own suicide van, hooking him up to the killing apparatus dubbed "the Humanitron"--and adding some butchering touches of his own. The case is assigned to veteran LAPD homicide detective Milo Sturgis, who turns, once again, to his friend Dr. Alex Delaware. But working this case raises a conflict of interest for Alex so profound that he can't even discuss it with Milo. The tension that develops between cop and psychologist further complicates an already baffling and complex murder investigation--one whose suspects include the families of Dr. Mate's "travelers," Mate's own son, and a psychopathic killer who relishes the geometry of death. Dr. Death is a rich brew of unforgettable characters, labyrinthine plotting, page-turning prose, and the unique insights into the darkest corners of the human mind that have earned Jonathan Kellerman international accolades as the master of psychological suspense.

A collection of short pieces written over a period of seven years in my writing group, Wine, Women & Words.

This volume is mostly her short stories with the odd poem. In author's words on her writing style from her poem The Flow of Magical Words. ""I love words, which pour easily from my pen, when I put pen to paper a world of words does open, it flows on the page it's soul mate, though no one can read the scrawl of words which well inside and opens a gate, out comes beauty, rhymes of passion, sage words and gloom, rhyming poem, deathly prose dark as the hand of doom, the right word is magic in my hand, like a lover sigh lightly fanned."" the short stories are of a dark supernatural nature included is the Magicians stories and Vivienne and the reaper and some other related stories and poems including a few versions of a vampire hunt gone wrong and the stories that inspired them.

Poems and stories of monsters of all sorts. Aliens, ghosts, grim reapers. vampires and zombies. Some stories very dark.