When My Time Comes: Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End

When My Time Comes: Conversations About Whether Those Who Are Dying Should Have the Right to Determine When Life Should End

The renowned radio host and one of the most trusted voices in the nation candidly and compassionately addresses the hotly contested right-to-die movement, of which she is one of our most inspiring champions. The basis for the acclaimed PBS series. Through interviews with terminally ill patients and their relatives, as well as physicians, ethicists, religious leaders, and representatives of both those who support and vigorously oppose this urgent movement, Rehm gives voice to a broad range of people personally linked to the realities of medical aid in dying. With characteristic evenhandedness, she provides the full context for this highly divisive issue and presents the fervent arguments—both for and against—that are propelling the current debate: Should we adopt laws allowing those who are dying to put an end to their suffering? Featuring a deeply personal foreword by John Grisham, When My Time Comes is a response to many misconceptions and misrepresentations of end-of-life care. It is a call to action—and to conscience—and it is an attempt to heal and soothe, reminding us that death, too, is an integral part of life. Don’t miss John Grisham’s new book, THE EXCHANGE: AFTER THE FIRM, coming soon! John Grisham is the author of forty-seven consecutive #1 bestsellers, which have been translated into nearly fifty languages. His recent books include The Judge's List, Sooley, and his third Jake Brigance novel, A Time for Mercy, which is being developed by HBO as a limited series.   Grisham is a two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and was honored with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award for Fiction.   When he's not writing, Grisham serves on the board of directors of the Innocence Project and of Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice system.   John lives on a farm in central Virginia. Barbara Coombs Lee PRESIDENT, COMPASSION & CHOICES Barbara Coombs Lee began her medical career as a candy striper at St. Joseph Hospital in Joliet, Illinois. As she writes in her book, Finish Strong: Putting Your Priorities First at Life’s End, she’s been working in health care for almost fifty-five years, specializing in intensive care and emergency rooms, caring for very ill patients, helping them stay alive. However, she came to believe in an individual’s right to finish life on his or her own terms. She remembers the day: May 19, 1994, the day Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. She writes: “Her son, John F. Kennedy, Jr., emerged from her apartment that morning and comforted the crowd that stood grieving on Fifth Avenue. He said, ‘My mother died surrounded by her friends and her family and her books. She did it in her own way and on her own terms. And we all feel lucky for that.’ ” Barbara said that moment motivated her to find a way to avert the suffering that so many undergo at the end of life. She became a public advocate, gaining admission to the Oregon State Bar, and ultimately joining the staff of the Oregon Senate Healthcare and Bioethics Committee. In 1994, the year of her conversion, she became one of the three chief petitioners who filed the Oregon Death with Dignity Act as a citizens’ initiative. She writes, “I spent the next fourteen years defending the resulting Death with Dignity law from efforts to undo it in every governmental arena—legislative, executive and judicial.” Oregon’s law had been embattled until 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court finally ruled that states have the authority to adopt medical aid in dying as part of the legitimate practice of medicine. On February 12, 2019, I interviewed Barbara for my podcast, On My Mind. I began by asking her about the lessons she had learned from caring for people who had not died well, who had had unwanted treatments and been kept alive against their wishes. “The technology that medicine wields, and of which we are so proud, is not necessarily in an individual’s best interest. Only individuals can review their lives, their beliefs, their values, and decide what is best for them. It took many more years and many more bedside experiences in intensive care units, emergency rooms, nursing homes, et cetera, before I had what you might call a broader understanding of people’s end-of-life journey. I learned that it might be different for each of us. It’s as though medicine has gotten ahead of human desire. There are so many ways to keep us alive, and yet the incredibly sophisticated means of keeping people alive don’t always take into account what people themselves want.” Barbara calls dying in America a “terrible mess.” She says, “We torture people with treatments that are futile and enormously burdensome, robbing them of the precious quality of their remaining days, robbing them of the time they would otherwise want to devote to the prio