Medical Biography

Marty, age 57, was given a preliminary diagnosis of ALS by his family doctor. Seven weeks later, the diagnosis was confirmed by a neurologist. Ten months and ten days later, Marty passed away. From day one, Alison, Marty’s spouse of over twenty-five years, kept a journal as a way to navigate the overwhelming state of her mind and soul. Soon the rawness of her words harmonized to tell the story of Marty’s diagnosis, illness, and decline. Dance Me to the End is an evocative memoir about witnessing a loved one suffer from a neurological, degenerative, and terminal disease.

Dr. Loren A. Olson has frequently been asked two questions: How could you not know that you were gay until the age of forty? Wasn't your marriage just a sham to protect yourself at your wife's expense? In Finally Out, Dr. Olson vigorously answers both questions by telling the inspiring story of his evolving sexuality, into which he intelligently weaves psychological concepts and gay history.

When a patient first asked Dr. Reggie Anderson to sit at her bedside as she passed from this life, something miraculous happened. As he held her hand, the veil between this world and the next parted…and he received an astonishing glimpse of what awaits us in heaven. Little did he know this was just a foretaste of what was to come - a lifetime of God-given "appointments with heaven." Join Reggie as he shares remarkable stories from his life and practice, including the personal tragedy that nearly drove him away from faith forever.

Having once aspired to be a journalist, Griggs found that the only way to make sense of what she was witnessing around her and maintain her sanity was to keep a diary. The Sky Was Falling is her day-to-day account of what most of us were grateful to only see in the news—the sharply increasing case numbers, the dwindling supply of respirators, the lack of clarity on how to treat this new disease.

In 2004, doctors discovered that Carmen Rice had a stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor, one of the deadliest of all cancers—the same cancer which killed John McCain, Edward Kennedy, and Beau Biden. After being diagnosed with a glioblastoma tumor, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard made headline news when she moved to Oregon to die with dignity. Carmen's doctor gave her six months to live, but with her faith in God and tenacious spirit, Carmen just kept beating the odds. They Call Me "The Miracle" is her story.

That Julie Yip-Williams survived infancy was a miracle. Then, at age 37, with two little girls at home, Julie was diagnosed with terminal metastatic colon cancer, and a different journey began. The Unwinding of the Miracle is the story of a vigorous life refracted through the prism of imminent death. When she was first diagnosed, Julie Yip-Williams sought clarity and guidance through the experience and, finding none, began to write her way through it - a chronicle that grew beyond her imagining.

The heart of many hospitals is the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). It is a place where humanity, ethics, and science collide in dramatic and deeply personal ways as parents, doctors, and nurses grapple with sometimes unanswerable questions: When does life begin? When and how should life end? And what does it mean to be human? Nearly 20 years ago, Dr. John D. Lantos wrote The Lazarus Case, a seminal work on ethical dilemmas in neonatology. He described the NICU as “a strong, strange, powerful place”. The

Is it cancer or just a bad pixel? Radiologists are the physicians we rarely get to see. Radiologists at Work contains the most memorable moments from the careers of 20 radiologists who practiced from the 1940s to the present day. These true stories are told with the trademark wit and warmth that has earned Carolyn Jourdan five national best-sellers.

Into the Gray Zone takes listeners to the edge of a dazzling, humbling frontier in our understanding of the brain: the so-called "gray zone" between full consciousness and brain death. People in this middle place have sustained traumatic brain injuries or are the victims of stroke or degenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Many are oblivious to the outside world, and their doctors believe they are incapable of thought.

In 1999, Munjed Al Muderis was a surgical resident working in Baghdad when the military police marched into the operating theatre and ordered the team to mutilate army deserters. When the head of surgery refused, he was executed. Munjed's choices were stark - comply and breach the medical oath, refuse and face death or flee. That day, Munjed's life changed forever. He escaped to Indonesia and boarded a boat to Australia.

Imagine undergoing an operation without anesthesia performed by a surgeon who refuses to sterilize his tools - or even wash his hands. This was the world of medicine when Thomas Dent Mütter began his trailblazing career as a plastic surgeon in Philadelphia during the middle of the 19th century. Although he died at just 48, Mütter was an audacious medical innovator who pioneered the use of ether as anesthesia, the sterilization of surgical tools, and a compassion-based vision for helping the severely deformed, which clashed spectacularly with the sentiments of his time.

We live in an age of medical miracles. Never in the history of humankind has so much talent and energy been harnessed to cure disease. So why does it feel like it’s getting harder to live our healthiest lives? Why does it seem like “experts” can’t agree on anything, and why do our interactions with medical professionals feel less personal, less honest, and less impactful than ever?

The Lobotomist explores one of the darkest chapters of American medicine: the desperate attempt to treat the hundreds of thousands of psychiatric patients in need of help during the middle decades of the 20th century. Into this crisis stepped Walter Freeman, MD, who saw a solution in lobotomy, a brain operation intended to reduce the severity of psychotic symptoms. Drawing on Freeman's documents and interviews with Freeman's family, Jack El-Hai takes a penetrating look at the life and work of this complex scientific genius.

As an emergency room doctor working on the rapid evaluation unit, Dr. Thomas Fisher has about three minutes to spend with the patients who come into the South Side of Chicago ward where he works before directing them to the next stage of their care. Bleeding: three minutes. Untreated wound that becomes life-threatening: three minutes. Kidney failure: three minutes. He examines his patients inside and out, touches their bodies, comforts and consoles them, and holds their hands on what is often the worst day of their lives.

These are the extraordinary realities of the NHS front line. From the historic junior doctor strikes to the 'humanitarian crisis' declared by the Red Cross, the overstretched health service is on the precipice. This is a powerful polemic on its systematic degradation and a letter of optimism to that same health service and those who support it. It captures with tenderness a new doctor's experiences of an NHS at breaking point.

Was Andy Warhol a hoarder? Did Einstein have autism? Was Frank Lloyd Wright a narcissist? In this surprising, inventive, and meticulously researched look at the evolution of mental health, acclaimed health and science journalist Claudia Kalb gives listeners a glimpse into the lives of high-profile historic figures through the lens of modern psychology, weaving groundbreaking research into biographical narratives that are deeply embedded in our culture.

Often misdiagnosed and misunderstood, traumatic brain injury (TBI) may be a life-altering event that can produce a wide range of symptoms affecting physical as well as psychological health. Now, a physician shares her personal journey with TBI after suffering a life-changing accident. In this touching and informative book, Dr. Chrisanne Gordon chronicles her struggles - the high points as well as the lows - as she is challenged to make sense of what happened and realizes that her medical training did not prepare her for these struggles.

Ed Patrick is an anaesthetist. Strong drugs for his patients, strong coffee for him. But it's not just sleep-giving for this anaesthetist, as he navigates emergencies, patients not breathing for themselves and living with a terrifying sense of responsibility. It's enough to leave anyone feeling numb. But don't worry, there's plenty of laughing gas to be had.

A mesmerizing and courageous memoir: the story of two sisters uncovering the depth of their love through the life-and-death experience of a bone marrow transplant. Throughout her life Elizabeth Lesser has sought understanding about what it means to be true to yourself and, at the same time, truly connected to the ones you love. But when her sister, Maggie, needs a bone marrow transplant to save her life, and Lesser learns that she is the perfect match, she faces a far more immediate and complex question about what it really means to love.

There Plant Eyes probes the ways in which blindness has shaped our ocularcentric culture, challenging deeply ingrained ideas about what it means to be “blind”. For millennia, blind­ness has been used to signify such things as thoughtlessness (“blind faith”), irrationality (“blind rage”), and unconsciousness (“blind evolution”). But at the same time, blind people have been othered as the recipients of special powers as compensation for lost sight (from the poetic gifts of John Milton to the heightened senses of the comic book hero Daredevil).