Books by Karen Hitchcock

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'There are many ways to get sick, many ways to crumble and crash. We are hearts and lungs and kidneys and skin, blood vessels, liver and brain. And we are so much more than this ...' In this essential Quarterly Essay, doctor and writer Karen Hitchcock explores the humane treatmen...t of the elderly and dying through some unforgettable cases. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life decisions, acute care of the frail and the demented, big pharma, over-treatment and attitudes to ageing and death among doctors, patients and their families. Hitchcock reveals a creeping ageism, often disguised, which threatens to turn the elderly into a 'burden' - difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. Thanks to health-dollar hysteria, the elderly are the only group of medical patients for whom we are trying to limit treatment, hospital stays, interventions and expense. We are justly seeking ways to determine when medical care may be futile, harmful or against a patient's wishes, but this can easily morph into limitations on care that suit the system rather than the patient. Hitchcock argues that we need to plan for the new future when more of us will be old, with an aim of making that time better, not shorter. And that we must change our institutions to fit the needs of an ageing population.
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I ask a young 200 - kilo patient what he snacks on. Nothing, he says. I look him in the eye. Nothing? He nods. I ask him about his chronic skin infections, his diabetes. He tears up: I eat hot chips and fried dim sims and drink three bottles of Coke every...

In this short, powerful book, Karen Hitchcock shines a light on ageism in our society. Through some unforgettable case studies, she shows what care for the elderly and dying is really like - both the good and the bad. With honesty and deep experience, she looks at end-of-life dec...isions and over-treatment, frailty and dementia. Dear Life is a moving and controversial argument against the creeping tendency to see the elderly as a ''burden''-difficult, hopeless, expensive and homogenous. While we rightly seek to curb treatment when it is futile, harmful or against a patient's wishes, this can sometimes lead to limits on care that suit the system rather than the person. Doctors may declare a situation hopeless when it may not be so. We must plan for a future when more of us will be old, Hitchcock argues, with the aim of making that time better, not shorter. And we must change our institutions and society to meet the needs of an ageing population. Dear Life is a landmark book by one of Australia's most powerful writers. ''The elderly, the frail are our society. They are our parents and grandparents, our carers and neighbours, and they are every one of us in the not-too-distant future . . . They are not a growing cost to be managed or a burden to be shifted or a horror to be hidden away, but people whose needs require us to change'' - Karen Hitchcock, Dear Life
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What happens when a doctor kills a patient? Are GPs overprescribing antidepressants? Does 'female Viagra' work? What role can psychedelics and cannabis play in treating pain? What is sickness, and how much of it is in our heads? In The Medicine, Dr Karen Hitchcock takes us to the... frontlines of everyday treatment, turning her acute gaze to everything from the flu season to dementia, plastic surgery to the humble sick day. In an overcrowded, underfunded medical system, she explores how more of us can be healthier, and how listening carefully to a patient's experience can be as important as prescribing a pill. These dazzling essays show Hitchcock to be one of the most fearless and illuminating medical thinkers of our time - reasonable, insightful and deeply humane.
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