Medical Memoirs

Life as a paramedic, writes Sally Gould in this candid, witty memoir, can be traumatic, gross, dull, hilarious, magical. To make the cut, you need to be able to think outside the square, keep calm in the midst of chaos, be in possession of a strong stomach, and simply brush it off when patients die. That’s on top of having a profound understanding of the human body, plus the skills to counter its failings. It also helps to have a highly developed and oftentimes dark sense of humour.

As revelatory as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson’s Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but often disparaged stage of life. For more than 5,000 years, 'old' has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease.

In Sickness and in Health has descriptive copy which is not yet available from the Publisher.

This story follows a shy, sixteen year old girl, as she attempts to become a professional radiographer from 1962 into the 1990s. All the incidents and cases are true, for they are Patricia Toulson’s real-life memories.

A silent epidemic of chronic illnesses afflicts tens of millions of Americans: These are diseases that are poorly understood, frequently marginalized, and can go undiagnosed and unrecognized altogether. Renowned writer Meghan O’Rourke delivers a revelatory investigation into this elusive category of “invisible” illness that encompasses autoimmune diseases, post-treatment Lyme disease syndrome, and now long COVID, synthesizing the personal and the universal to help all of us through this new frontier.

With poignant insight and humor, Frank Vertosick, Jr., MD, describes some of the greatest challenges of his career, including a six-week-old infant with a tumor in her brain, a young man struck down in his prime by paraplegia, and a minister with a .22-caliber bullet lodged in his skull. Told through intimate portraits of Vertosick's patients and unsparing-yet-fascinatingly detailed descriptions of surgical procedures, When the Air Hits Your Brain illuminates both the mysteries of the mind and the realities of the operating room.

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis", the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. In Every Patient Tells a Story, Dr. Lisa Sanders takes us bedside to witness the process of solving diagnostic dilemmas, providing a firsthand account of the expertise and intuition that lead a doctor to make the right diagnosis.

Nine months of tying tourniquets and pushing new medications, of IVs, chest compressions, and defibrillator shocks - that was Kevin Grange's initiation into emergency medicine when, at age 36, he enrolled in the "Harvard of paramedic schools": UCLA's Daniel Freeman paramedic program, long considered one of the best and most intense paramedic training programs in the world.

When American saxophonist and social activist Fred Ho was diagnosed with stage 3b colo-rectal cancer in 2006 he underwent immediate surgery to remove the tumor and began preparing for chemotherapy. Within days his friends mobilized to arrange grocery deliveries, transport, companionship, and housekeeping duties - they called themselves “Warriors for Fred”. Fred chose to write his astonishing cancer memoir as a diary, acknowledging that all the greatest warriors wrote daily diaries.

In The Nurses, New York Times best-selling author and award-winning journalist Alexandra Robbins peers behind the staff-only door to write a lively, fast-paced story and a riveting work of investigative journalism. Robbins followed real-life nurses in four hospitals and interviewed hundreds of others in a captivating audiobook filled with joy and violence, miracles and heartbreak, dark humor and narrow victories, gripping drama and unsung heroism.

It has been said that everyone knows a cancer survivor, but no one has met an Alzheimer's survivor - until now. In his first two books, Dr. Dale Bredesen outlined the revolutionary treatments that are changing what had previously seemed like the inevitable outcome of cognitive decline and dementia. And in these moving narratives, you can hear directly from the first survivors of Alzheimer’s themselves - their own amazing stories of hope told in their own words.

From Darkness to Sight chronicles the remarkable life journey of Dr. Ming Wang, a world-renowned laser eye surgeon and philanthropist. As a teenager, Ming fought valiantly to escape one of history’s darkest eras - China’s Cultural Revolution - during which millions of innocent youth were deported to remote areas to face a life sentence of poverty and hard labor. Through his own tenacity and his parents’ tireless efforts to provide a chance of freedom for their son, Ming eventually made his way to America with $50 in his pocket and an American dream in his heart.

In the spirit of Oliver Sacks Awakenings and the TV series House, Dr. Eric Manheimer's Twelve Patients is a memoir from the medical director of Bellevue Hospital that uses the plights of 12 very different patients - from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners from Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons - to illustrate larger societal issues.

In 1954, researchers at the newly formed National Institute of Mental Health set out to study the genetics of schizophrenia. When they got word that four 24-year-old identical quadruplets in Lansing, Michigan, had all been diagnosed with the mental illness, they could hardly believe their ears. Here was incontrovertible proof of hereditary transmission and, thus, a chance to bring international fame to their fledgling institution.

At age thirty-eight, Jonathan Gluck, a new father with a promising journalism career, was shocked to learn he had multiple myeloma, a rare, incurable blood cancer. He was told he had eighteen months to live. That was more than twenty years ago. Gluck isn’t just something of a medical miracle. He’s also part of a growing population. Thanks to revolutionary medical advances, many cancers and other serious illnesses are no longer death sentences but chronic diseases people can often live with for years.

In the early 1920s, when neurosurgery was more likely to be a death sentence than a cure, two men revolutionized the study of the brain: Wilder Penfield and William Cone. Drawn together by their shared fascination with the “undiscovered country” inside our heads, the surgeons formed a partnership and within ten years established the Montreal Neurological Institute in a Gothic stone hospital on the slope of a mountain. The Neuro soon became the world’s leading centre for neurological study, attracting men and women from across the globe to a booming mid-century city.

Eva Hagberg Fisher spent her lonely youth looking everywhere for connection: drugs, alcohol, therapists, boyfriends, girlfriends. Sometimes she found it, but always temporarily. Then, at age 30, an undiscovered mass in her brain ruptured. So did her life. A brain surgery marked only the beginning of a long journey, and when her illness hit a critical stage, it forced her to finally admit the long suppressed truth: she was vulnerable, she needed help, and she longed to grow. She needed true friendship for the first time.

A political journalist and activist, Cousins was also a professor of medical humanities at UCLA, where he studied the biochemistry of human emotions and their relationship to healing. When Cousins was hospitalized with a debilitating collagen illness, he decided to take his health into his own hands. Cousins and his doctor combated the disease together by creating a regimen of laughter and vitamin C specifically calibrated to his needs. Against all odds, the treatment worked, proving to Cousins that a positive attitude was key to his improvement.

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.

One in three births is traumatic. It doesn’t have to be that way. Rebecca planned to give birth at the hospital affiliated with her university. But hospital practices and policies that were more than 20 years out of date left her with complications that seemed preventable. Embark on a journey with Rebecca as she exposes the stark realities of institutional care during childbirth and reveals inspirational solutions for parents and professionals alike.