Finish Strong: Putting Your Priorities First at Life's End

by Barbara Coombs Lee

The guide to achieving the positive end-of-life experience you want and deserve, this second edition of Finish Strong by Barbara Coombs Lee the President Emerita/Senior Adviser of Compassion & Choices, features valuable new material, including a new chapter called “Race and Culture Matter;” an Afterword by Kim Callinan, the President/CEO of Compassion & Choices; and a detailed index for the book.

It’s hard to talk about death in America. But even though the topic has been taboo, life’s end is an eventual reality.

So why not shape it to our values? Finish Strong is for those of us who want an end-of-life experience to match the life we’ve enjoyed. We know we should prepare, but are unsure how to think and talk about it, how to live true to our values and priorities, and how to make our wishes stick.

The usual advice about advance directives and conversations is important but woefully inadequate. This book describes concrete action in the here and now to help live our best lives to the end.

Finish Strong will guide you Written with candor and clarity by a nurse, physician assistant and attorney who became a leading advocate for end-of-life options, this book can help you Finish Strong .

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword by Haider Warraich, M.D.
Preface by Barbara Coombs Lee
A Note About the Second Edition Afterword by Kim Callinan, president and chief executive officer, Compassion & Choices
Tools to Take Charge
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About Compassion & Choices
Notes on Sources
Index

360 pages, Hardcover

Published August 29, 2022

About the author

About the new second edition

Finish Strong is for you, the healthcare consumer. It covers the tough issues around aging and dying other books shy away from.

This book was a long time in the making—a lifetime actually. It offers some of the fruits of my labors in medicine and healthcare advocacy. If you count the years I volunteered as a candy striper under the stern tutelage of the nursing nuns at St. Joseph Hospital in Joliet, Illinois, I’ve worked in healthcare almost fifty-five years. Dozens of clinical settings and assignments, countless patient encounters, years of advocacy in courtrooms and statehouses, decades of observation and experience—those are the seeds of the fruits borne by these pages.

In 2022, in creating the second edition of Finish Strong (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1732774463), I added a new chapter, “Race and Culture Matter.” It discusses the cultural differences, racial biases and institutional barriers that impact what the medical system offers people of diverse backgrounds, and the choices they make. My hope is that being aware of the cultural traditions and racial biases impacting healthcare can help people make choices that transcend those and reflect true, individual priorities at life’s end.

I dearly hope the stories, commentary and tips in Finish Strong will have a positive influence on your life and your healthcare choices.

Reviews

[Kristy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Written by the President of CompassionandChoices.org (see their online resources). Lee was a nurse practitioner and physician's assistant when she got involved in leading the advocacy for the first state Death with Dignity Law (Oregon). I think she got a public health and law degree along the way to becoming a leader in the end-of-life choice movement. This book is well worth reading on how to make your wishes clear to family and doctors. Great examples of what dying well can look like and what can interfere. Example documents and videos to use. Good synopsis and reviews of the 1st edition of this book are here on goodreads. This 2nd edition has an extra chapter on race and culture.

[Harris B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was familiar with Compassion & Choices primarily because of their efforts to further medically assisted dying. This book goes far beyond that and should be in the library of every hospice nurse. The stories of dying badly and dying well are touching and should provide the impetus to readers to plan for their own end.

[G. ROSKAMP · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed how I will engage with the medical community, in determining my last chapter.

So thorough in providing examples of document that can be modified to give to my doctor. References and index is beyond any I have seen..

[jj · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been an educator in the medical and end of life movement for over a decade. This book is highly informative and written for anyone who wants to take more control in their medical options.
Highly recommend!