Books

A Hospital Bed at Home is a linked collection of true stories about the experience of being a carer during the weeks, months and years that can stretch between the day someone you love is diagnosed with an incurable, fatal disease and the day of his or her death. Couples facing separation after forty years together; a workaholic with three small children and a dying, angry wife; an Irish immigrant called home to nurse an ailing father who cannot, or will not, eat; a Buddhist couple striving for serene acceptance of a brain tumour… The patients and carers profiled in these stories bring to their challenging situations the gamut of typically human strengths and weaknesses, plus all the baggage of their pre-existing relationships.

The narratives are intensely personal and biographical, but the insights and information they contain about illness, caregiving and dying at home have profound and general relevance. The author’s reflections on these topics are woven throughout, linking the individual stories and concluding with a gritty memoir about caring for her own mother, an anxious optimist who was ravaged by cancer.

The iconic Australian author Helen Garner described A Hospital Bed at Home as:

“A quietly articulate, intensely practical account of the work of love in the face of death: a guide for the timid and a challenge for the confident.” – HELEN GARNER (Author of The Spare Room)

Look inside the paperback on Amazon or view sample chapters on my PressBooks site – See reviews on GoodReads and Fishpond and these ones by Mark Dimor and Christina Escamilla – Buy as a Kindle ebook or as an epub from iTunes or Kobo