Medical Memoirs

After years of treating patients, Dr. Michelle Choi had a moment of clarity that rocked her to her core: she wasn’t really helping anyone, and after all these years, she had lost sight of herself. The only way to reclaim some decency would be to demand a big change. After working her entire life to become a doctor, Michelle achieved her dream but realized it wasn’t what she expected. Instead of helping patients feel well, she answered corporate medicine’s unrealistic expectations and practiced assembly-line healthcare.

At twenty-four, Arnold Beisser was a recent medical school graduate and a nationally ranked tennis player. But overnight a devastating bout of polio left him permanently paralyzed from the neck down and dependent on an iron lung to draw his next breath. Polio robbed Arnold Beisser of his strength, his athletic ability, and almost his life. Yet he discovered in this unthinkable trap not only the expected sadness and despair, but wonder, delight, and the pleasure of everyday living.

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?

An estimated 10 percent of Americans are implanted with medical devices - like pacemakers, artificial hips, cardiac stents, etc. The overwhelming majority of high-risk implanted devices have never undergone a single clinical trial. The FDA lets device manufacturers decide whether to report serious complications or deaths that may have been caused by their products. Here, award-winning journalist Jeanne Lenzer brings these horrifying statistics to life through the story of one working-class man who, after his "cure" nearly kills him, ends up in a battle for justice.

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.

Sara appears to have everything it takes to be happy: a loving wife, a beautiful home, and a successful biotech career. But inside, she’s battling a perplexing, self-destructive impulse that has driven her to sabotage relationships—including her marriage.

I decided to write this book to share the last 20 years and how opiates devastated my life. I hope that people who listen to this book will learn about the disease of opiate addiction and seek help before it's too late. I share details about my life as it was before the injury and the many ways this injury turned my life and the lives of all those dear to me into a living hell over the next decade. This included my wife, children, extended family, and friends who also share their stories and experiences in this book.

The acclaimed author of Carved in Sand - a veteran investigative journalist who endured persistent back pain for decades - delivers the definitive book on the subject: an essential examination of all facets of the back pain industry, exploring what works, what doesn't, what may cause harm, and how to get on the road to recovery. In her effort to manage her chronic back pain, investigative reporter Cathryn Jakobson Ramin spent years and a small fortune on a panoply of treatments.

Crushed between a truck and a tree, Simon and his wife were both pronounced dead at the scene of a horrific car accident. Enduring a broken skull, jaw, arms, clavicle and pelvis, followed by a coma, Simon lives to tell his remarkable journey from tragedy to triumph.

As heard on the hit podcast Cancer in the Form of a Question. Jeff Stewart is a Jeopardy! champion and pharma insider whose cancer was discovered when he tried to donate his kidney. Stewart's story of facing cancer with composure is inspiring.

One day in 2002 the 50-year old body of former Pittsburgh Steeler and hall of famer Mike Webster was laid on a cold table in front of pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. Webster's body looked to Omalu like the body of a much older man, and the circumstances of his behavior prior to his death were clouded in mystery. But when Omalu cut into Webster's brain, it appeared to be normal. Something didn't add up.

His name was Joshua Silver. He was 23 years old, educated, and had an impressive vocabulary. The NYPD had found Joshua Silver naked in Times Square, barking like a dog. It was just another night for Julie Holland, the attending doctor in the world famous Bellevue Hospital's psychiatric emergency room.

A Yorkshire Vet: The Next Chapter follows Julian's veterinary stories and amusing anecdotes through his work as a mixed practice vet in North Yorkshire. Julian has spent over 20 years working in Thirsk, literally following in the footsteps of James Herriot - the world-renowned vet and author. This book follows Julian's passion for treating the animals under his care, be they cows, sheep, pigs, horses, alpacas or dogs and cats, along with the interesting and amusing characters who own and care for them.

As a seasoned paramedic and union leader, Anthony Almojera thought he could handle anything his job threw at him. Like many medical first responders, he came from a troubled background and carried the traumas of the city as well as its triumphs. He had grown up in the rough-and-tumble Park Slope of the 1980s, been homeless for a time, and had watched murder, addiction, and hopelessness consume those closest to him. But he had dedicated his life to helping people in need, and while every day was filled with tragedy—stabbings, shootings, accidents, suicides—it also brought moments of uplift.

After knowing friends with anorexia and being baffled by their behavior, Laura Moisin suddenly found herself prone to the same disease - not eating at all and going weeks at a time consuming nothing but water and the occasional black coffee. Deceiving therapists by misleading them with symptoms of depression, her anorexia is prolonged, and her health deteriorates rapidly.

Karen Fine always knew that she wanted to be a vet and wasn't going to let anything stop her: not her allergy to cats, and not the fact that in the '80s veterinary medicine was still a mostly male profession. Inspired by her grandfather, a compassionate doctor who paid house calls to all his (human) patients, Dr. Fine persevered, and brought her Oupa's principles into her own practice, which emphasizes the need to understand her patients’ stories to provide the best possible care.

In her luminous new memoir in essays, Mary Pipher—as she did in her New York Times bestseller Women Rowing North—taps into a cultural moment, to offer wisdom, hope and insight into loss and change. Drawing from her own experiences and expertise as a psychologist specializing in women, trauma and the effect of our culture on our mental health, she looks inward in A Life in Light to what shaped her as a woman, one who has experienced darkness throughout her life but was always drawn to the light.

LiveReal recounts a family's journey through their daughter's liver transplant. It is a story of faith and miracles, following a life-threatening diagnosis of Biliary Atresia. This story provides a candid portrait of the fears, struggles, and hard decisions that her loving parents had to face. From a Kasai surgery to the prospect of a second transplant, the family experienced the beauty and heartache of life events.

Sixteen years ago, Juli Boit, a 25-year-old nurse practitioner, moved from Los Angeles to a small village in Kenya to be a part of an HIV program. In 2009, she founded a hospice called Kimbilio where men, women, and children come either to heal or to be loved until they die. On an ordinary Friday afternoon in 2016, a three-pound baby boy, Ryan, wrapped in pink was brought to Kimbilio. He had been born prematurely earlier that week. His mom passed away while giving birth, and neighbors miraculously kept Ryan alive on water alone for five days until they brought him to the hospice.

SuperSummary, a modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, offers high-quality instructional study guides for challenging works of literature. This audio study guide for When Breath Becomes Air by Dr. Paul Kalanithi includes detailed summary and analysis of each chapter and an in-depth exploration of the book’s multiple symbols, motifs, and themes such as the meaning of death and the doctor-patient dichotomy.