Witness to Illness: Strategies for Caregiving and Coping

More than 20 million Americans are chronically ill, and another 20 million will, at some time in their lives, deal with an acute illness, say the authors of this guide for the rest of us, the 200 million who will watch a loved one struggle with illness. Both Horowitz (who witnessed her mother's and husband's bouts with cancer) and Lanes (a psychiatrist whose father has had heart disease) know that the m task of witnessing an illness is often taken on suddenly and without training. Their book is a crash course we all could use. The triple health-care dilemmas of high cost and lack of access, the nursing shortage, and the cost-cutting trend toward earlier release from hospitals put growing pressure on a patient's family and friends to act as care-givers and advocates. Among the skills they need are an ability to find information resources for the patient, to act as his or her advocate with medical personnel, to ease communications among family and friends, and to cope with their own emotions. Perhaps most important, the authors recognize that caring for a loved one who is ill is ``one of the strangest paradoxes . . . an experience filled with not only suffering but the beauty of giving.'' (Jan.)