Medical Memoirs

Maneater is a personal account by a specialist who approaches her work like a forensic scientist or a case-hardened private eye. Dr. Pamela Nagami is a leading authority on infectious diseases and her stories will shock, amaze, and warn listeners.The patients in Maneater are ordinary Americans. When Danielle Jordan innocently ordered a salad for lunch in Puerta Vallarta she had no idea she had just become the "host" to an organism that six years later would grow into a worm and burrow into her brain.

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.

Anyone who lives with an eating disorder fights their own thoughts, their own anxieties, their own self, every second of every minute of every day. For Lizzie this was her reality from the age of 14. However through professional help, the support of her loving family, and her Christian faith, she somehow found the hope and strength to overcome. Life Hurts tells Lizzie's story, reflecting on it from her perspective as a doctor. Her vision is to inspire and encourage other to see that, although eating disorders can be devastating, there is hope for all of us.

Burning the Days captures a singular life, beginning with a Manhattan boyhood and then, satisfying his father's wishes, graduation from West Point, followed by service in the Air Force as a pilot. In some of the most evocative pages ever written about flying, Salter describes the exhilaration and terror of combat as a fighter pilot in the Korean War, scenes that are balanced by haunting pages of love and a young man's passion for women.

When Amy B. Scher was struck with undiagnosed late-stage, chronic Lyme disease, the best physicians in America labeled her condition incurable and potentially terminal. Deteriorating rapidly, she went on a search to save her own life - from the top experts in Los Angeles and the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis to a state-of-the-art hospital in Chicago. After exhausting all of her options in the US, she discovered a possible cure - but it was highly experimental, available only in India, and had as much of a probability of killing her as it did of curing her.

Ignác Semmelweis is remembered for the now-commonplace notion that doctors must wash their hands before examining patients. In mid-19th century Vienna, however, this was a subversive idea. With deaths from childbed fever exploding, Semmelweis discovered that doctors themselves were spreading the disease. While his simple reforms worked immediately - childbed fever in Vienna all but disappeared - they brought down upon Semmelweis the wrath of the establishment, and led to his tragic end.

Spared: A Memoir of Risk and Resolve follows the account of a young girl who witnesses her father’s descent into the psychological and physical deterioration of Huntington’s Disease (HD), a hereditary, neurological, degenerative illness which has minimal treatments and no cure. The author grows up in a household of uncertainty, secrecy, and shame, and by overhearing the adults speak, she gains limited understanding and a respectful fear of what Dad calls “The Shakes.”

Dr. Liz O'Riordan is a breast cancer surgeon who has battled against social, physical and mental challenges to practice at the top of her field. Under the Knife charts Liz's incredible highs: performing like a couture dressmaker as she molded and reshaped women's breasts, while saving their lives; to the heart-breaking lows of telling ten women a day that they had cancer. But this memoir is more than just an eye-opening look at the realities of training to be a female surgeon in a man's world

Partly a memoir and partly a recent history of medicine, the definitive account of Michael Milken’s lifetime work to accelerate medicine's evolution from a dark past to a bright future.

Compiled from hours of interviews drawn from the eponymous National Geographic documentary, this inspiring book from world-renowned infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci shares the lessons that have shaped the celebrated doctor's life philosophy, offering an intimate view of one of the world's greatest medical minds as well as universal advice to live by.

This is the story of a physician who lived life with blinders on, navigating the increasing demands of being “doctor mom”. It reveals that grit and diligent hard work do not protect you against the heartache of burnout, and the best decisions are not made with logic or reason, but right-brain instinct. Right Brain Rescue is a literary “creativity prescription” that will inspire us to think differently about how we use our energy, explore our values, and care for our bodies and minds so we can become the most sparkly version of ourselves.

From his early years with his loving Jewish family to the horrors of Auschwitz to his life as a Nobel Prize-winning writer, Elie Wiesel tells his story. Passionate and poignant, All Rivers Run to the Sea is an unforgettable book of love and rage, doubt and faith, despair and trust, and ultimately, of wisdom.

Zack McDermott, a 26-year-old Brooklyn public defender, woke up one morning convinced he was being filmed, Truman Show-style, as part of an audition for a TV pilot. This was it - his big dreams were finally coming true. Every passerby was an actor; every car would magically stop for him; everything he saw was a cue from "The Producer" to help inspire the performance of a lifetime. After a manic spree around Manhattan, Zack, who is bipolar, was arrested on a subway platform and admitted to Bellevue Hospital.

Lost in My Mind is a stunning memoir describing Kelly Bouldin Darmofal's journey from adolescent girl to special education teacher, wife and mother - despite severe Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Spanning three decades, Kelly's journey is unique in its focus on TBI education in America (or lack thereof).

“Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in America, and for the ‘lucky’ stroke victims who don’t die, about half will spend the rest of their lives trying to recover.” Roughly 700,000 American suffer a stroke each year and around 140,000 of them are fatal. Different Strokes is an in-depth look at what surviving, or not surviving, a stroke can mean.

Welcome to the life of Dr Max Skittle. Therapist, relationship counsellor, social worker, friend, parent-figure - and, yes: doctor. Join Max - and his patients - as he takes us on a rollercoaster journey through a year in the life of a doctor: from infected toenails, to wonky elbows, to erectile disfunction, to bed bugs; the happy couple expecting a surprise new baby; the teenage girl struggling with body image issues; the loving family grappling with grief, Max shows us all the highs and crushing lows that come with being a GP.

Teva Harrison was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at the age of 37. In this brilliant and inspiring graphic memoir, she documents through comic illustration and short personal essays what it means to live with the disease.

The summer before she was set to head out of state to pursue her MFA, 26-year-old Cole Cohen submitted herself to a battery of tests. For as long as she could remember, she'd struggled with a series of learning disabilities that made it nearly impossible to judge time and space - standing at a crosswalk, she couldn't tell you if an oncoming car would arrive in 10 seconds or 30; if you asked her to let you know when 10 minutes had passed, she might notify you in a minute or an hour.

Deeply touching and uplifting, What You See When You Can't See offers a way of looking at the world through different eyes and a road map to finding bliss in the simplest of things. Zena was born with Marfan Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder leaving her nearly completely blind, yet she kept this condition hidden from the world for four decades - until she met Munch. A guide dog with a huge personality, Munch made Zena's invisible disability suddenly plain for all the world to see. This book shares the story of Zena's journey with Munch....

Furiously Happy meets Elaine Lui in this truly original - and surprisingly hilarious - memoir about one woman’s journey to learn how to walk after a debilitating diagnosis turned her life upside down.Learn How to Walk (Again) To-Do List: Step 1: Stand, Step 2: Step, Step 3: Pee (Yes!), Step 4: Walk with walker, Step 5: Walk with sticks, Step 6: Walk without props Recreational interlude for sex Step, 7: RUN! Ruth Marshall - power-mom, wife, actor, and daughter - was in great health, until one day, her feet started to tingle.