Not a Total Waste

Ian W. Toal is a registered nurse in Barrie, Ontario.

In 1991, the author’s son, Michael, died of AIDS at the age of 33.
This book, a powerful chronicle of the final year of Michael’s life,
describes a mother’s love for her son and the range of emotion she
experiences as she attempts to care for him in a manner that will
preserve his dignity. A resource section at the end of the book gives
information about HIV and AIDS (including a glossary, a reading list,
and addresses of support groups), but the focus of Not a Total Waste is
the people—both patients and caregivers—directly affected by AIDS.
For patients, the right to die with dignity is threatened by a variety
of factors—an impersonal health-care system, flagrant prejudice,
family conflict, and friends and caregivers whose ideas about what is
best for the patient conflict with the patient’s own wishes.

The universality of much of its content makes this book a valuable
resource for people whose lives have been touched not just by AIDS, but
any type of terminal illness.