Book Review: The In-Between
The subtitle of this book is “unforgettable encounters during life’s final moments.” This is a big part of this book by first-time author Hadley Vlahos, a hospice nurse in Florida. She clearly has a talent for writing as the book is a very easy read.
Each chapter is about one of her patients, and at the end of each chapter the patient dies. Such is the life of a hospice nurse. But each person/chapter has a lesson and the author threads together her own life with what she learns about life from her dying patients. Oh, and every chapter is a tearjerker. I read it in bed, a chapter a night. It is the perfect size for that.
The author became pregnant at 19 while in college. She was shunned by many (Florida is pretty conservative), but her mother stood by her, she went to nursing school, got her RN and has thrived as a hospice nurse. She also had her baby, later got married to a doctor, had two more children, and now has a very successful book. So, she’s done alright.
But back to the book. Part of my interest in reading about this subject is my age. I’m seeing more of my peers pass on and know that it is likely I’ll die in the next 20 years. This book is very helpful, and the author really demonstrates how hospice services can be amazingly helpful for the dying patient and for their families. I know with my mom, I often had to argue with care givers since they are trained to save the patient and heal them. And often I had to intervene so that the firemen didn’t take my mom to the hospital.
Those in hospice services understand that their patients aren’t going to get better. The job of the healthcare providers is to make the patient comfortable and to comply with the dying person’s wishes. In our system, that is very hard to do sometimes.
The hospice patients in this book vary from wealthy people to one patient who lived under a bridge in a homeless encampment. Don’t judge unless you’ve read the book. And most of Haley’s patients are in between those extremes—not wealthy and not living under a bridge. It is not all happy endings, but it is all real.
The title of the book refers to a particular phenomenon observed by the author and many others. This is the phenomenon of the dying, when death is imminent, claiming to be visited by deceased relatives. Sometimes a parent, sometime a spouse, but always someone very close the person nearing death. Most people believe this is a hallucination, one of the last tricks the mind plays on us. But those who experience it will even say that they realize others will discount the experience as a hallucination, but they say it is real. It is also experienced by atheists as well as those with religious beliefs.
While many if not most hospice nurses recount these episodes, I saw an article with an interchange between the author and an ER nurse. The ER nurse’s response to these stories was, “Nobody who works in ER believes in an afterlife.” Interesting stuff.
I really liked the book and recommend it to you. It is 259 pages, in a small format but relatively large font and nicely laid out. All this means it is a real pleasure to read. And while a tearjerker, it is also a joy.
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