Medical Biography

From Mercy Ships surgeon Dr. Mark G. Shrime comes an inspiring memoir about finding the answer to life's biggest question - "Why?" - and about following that answer through remarkable, unlikely places on the road to fulfillment, purpose, and joy.

On the flight to their "babymoon" in Hawaii before their first child arrived, Allison Pataki's husband turned to her to ask if his eye looked strange, and then suddenly lost consciousness. After making an emergency landing, they discovered that Dave, a lifelong, healthy athlete and orthopedic surgery resident at Rush Medical School in Chicago, had suffered a rare, and often fatal, stroke. Dave was one of the lucky ones though, and he survived, but the man who woke up from his coma was not the same man Allison had fallen in love with at Yale.

Burl is the story of one man’s unlikely rise from the coal mines of Appalachia to the pinnacle of journalism. After being diagnosed with a fatal kidney disease as a child, Burl Osborne pioneered home dialysis treatment and became the 130th person to undergo a live kidney transplant in 1966—then an unproven, high-risk operation. While managing his challenging illness, Burl distinguished himself early as a writer and reporter with The Associated Press, eventually rising to the top of the wire service’s executive ranks.

In her former career as an English professor, Theresa Brown had been shielded from the harsh reality of death. That all changed the day she decided to become an oncology nurse. In Critical Care, Theresa writes powerfully and honestly about her first year on the hospital floor. With great compassion and a disarming sense of humor, she shares the trials and triumphs of her patients and comes to realize that caring for a patient means much more than simply treating a disease.

Donny Herbert was a hardworking Buffalo city firefighter who, in December 1995, was searching the attic of a burning house when the snow-laden roof collapsed. For six minutes he was without oxygen. A beloved husband, a father of four boys, Donny fell into a vegetative state that lasted nearly a decade. He was, for all practical purposes, gone. Until one day, in April 2005, when he woke up and spoke almost nonstop to his family and loved ones for nearly 18 hours.

In Life's Work, an outspoken Christian reproductive justice advocate and abortion provider (one of the few doctors to provide such services to women in Mississippi and Alabama) pulls from his personal and professional journeys as well as the scientific training he received as a doctor to reveal how he came to believe, unequivocally, that helping women in need, without judgment, is precisely the Christian thing to do.

Facing the prospect of a career-ending disability as she adjusts to life with multiple sclerosis, Dr. Lisa Doggett is forced to deal with a new level of uncertainty and vulnerability, and the everyday fear that something new will go wrong. Taking off her white coat—becoming a patient herself—she confronts unimaginable fears, copes with her limitations, and sidesteps her skepticism of alternative medicine to seek help from unlikely sources. MS pushes Doggett—a perfectionist at heart—to embrace self-compassion.

James Herriot meets Jeff Foxworthy in the real-life adventures of a traveling horse doctor. Climb into the truck alongside large animal vet Dr. Madison Seamans and race to the aid of horses with wounds, stomach aches, allergies, and bizarre behaviors, as well as those in severe physical distress. Quite by accident, you'll find yourself familiar with and understanding common equine medical problems and how they are diagnosed and treated, all while marveling at the remarkable situations a country veterinarian can find himself in.

Actor Jim Beaver (Supernatural, Deadwood, Justified) and his wife Cecily Adams (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Moogie) were at the peaks of their careers and happily raising a beautiful two-year old daughter, Madeline. Then tragedy struck, not once, but twice. What followed was laid down by Jim in a moving, poignant, and uplifting journal of the following year, a year filled with heartbreak as well as enormous gifts and invaluable lessons, not just for Jim and his family but for listeners who traveled along with him on his journey.

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.

Join Colin Black on his journey from accidental medical student to HSE and NHS trainee and, finally, consultant paediatric anaesthetist at the largest children’s hospital in Ireland, where any given day could end in laughter or tears—and that’s just the staff. Razor-sharp and forthright, Gas Man is a disarming and frequently hilarious account of life in one of the most fascinating and thrilling professions at medicine’s frontline, where every day is a heady cocktail of severe pressure, poignancy and profound social awkwardness.

The moving story of an Irish immigrant's life from a poverty-stricken childhood in Ireland to becoming a captain of industry, After the Roof Caved In is a powerful, poignant look at how hard work and education enabled one young man to change his life and circumstances completely.

In January 2019, after experiencing a lifetime of poor sleep and a rapid and dramatic degeneration of his ability to sleep over the course of 2018, author and nondual entheogenic educator Martin Ball completely lost the ability to sleep for 10 consecutive days. This horrific event, what lead up to it, and the challenging and difficult aftermath is explored in intimate personal detail in this book. No stone is left unturned in this unintentional exploration of the altered states of being awake.

Offering examples of how to make medicine better for the healers and those they serve, If I Betray These Words profiles clinicians across the country who are tough, resourceful, and resilient, but feel trapped between the patient-first values of their Hippocratic oath and the business imperatives of a broken healthcare system. If I Betray These Words confronts the threat and broken promises of moral injury—what it is; where it comes from; how it manifests; and who’s fighting back against it. We need better healthcare—for patients and for the workforce. It’s time to act.

Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family - that his father's mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw's first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever.

Layton Reid was a globe-trotting, risk-taking, sunshine-addicted bachelor - then came a melanoma diagnosis. Cancer startled him out of his arrested development - he returned home to Halifax to work as a wedding photographer - and remission launched him into a new, passionate life as a husband and father-to-be. When the melanoma returned, now at Stage IV, Layton and his family put all their stock into a punishing alternative therapy, hoping for a cure.

Tara has it pretty good: a nice job, a writing career, a forgiving boyfriend. She should be happy. Yet Tara can't stay sober. She's terrible at monogamy. Even her psychiatrist grows sick of her and stops returning her calls. She spends most of her time putting out social fires, barely pulling things off, and feeling sick and tired.

Catherine Laborde, qui a des années durant présenté la météo sur TF1, se dévoile avec ce livre vérité, tout en pudeur, émotion, humour aussi, qui parlera à tous. Dans ce livre vérité sur la maladie de Parkinson dont Catherine Laborde est victime, elle raconte tout en pudeur, émotion, humour aussi, ce mal qui touche plusieurs milliers de personnes, malades et aidants inclus. "Après avoir réfléchi à mon quotidien, j'établis ainsi la liste non exhaustive des symptômes de la maladie de Parkinson qui me touchent."

Daniel Tammet can perform extraordinary maths in his head, sees numbers as shapes, colours, textures, and motions, and can learn to speak a language fluently from scratch in three days. He also has a compulsive need for order and routine. He eats exactly 45 grams of porridge for breakfast and cannot leave the house without counting the number of items of clothing he's wearing. If he gets stressed or unhappy, he closes his eyes and counts. But in some ways, Daniel is not all like the Rain Man.

Eleanor met Aaron when she was just a teenager, and he was working at a local record store - older, experienced, and irresistibly charming. Escaping the clichés of fleeting young love, their summer romance bloomed into a relationship that survived college and culminated in a marriage and two children. From the outside looking in, their life had all the trappings of what most would consider a success story. But, as in any marriage, things weren’t always as they seemed.