Medical Memoirs

When Jane, a world-famous Harvard oncologist, suddenly collapses at work, the medical team resuscitating her makes a shocking discovery: she has advanced breast cancer that she’s been hiding for years. The results are catastrophic. In Sickness shows how even the most rational people can be nearly destroyed by their irrational fears. Tragic, moving, and wryly funny at times, this is an unflinching portrayal of a complicated marriage and its secrets.

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.

Larry Brilliant's life journey has led him on a purposeful path across continents and countercultural movements, marching arm in arm with the men and women who defined a generation. A man who has always been in the right place at the right time, Brilliant has engaged with some of the most prominent thought leaders, spiritual masters, heroes, and icons in the world, including Neem Karoli Baba (Maharajji), Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, Mikhail Gorbachev, Wavy Gravy, the Grateful Dead, the Dalai Lama, and Barack Obama.

In 2017, David got what he thought was a mild touch of the flu. This book is the story of why David would make a lousy doctor. Contrary to the book’s title, David had lymphoma and it was terminal. But A Mild Touch of the Cancer isn’t your standard "how I survived" compendium. It is a hilarious tale, written while battling one of life’s greatest challenges. It’s a book about living with optimism and positivity, by a self-proclaimed Genetically Modified Organism.

Nine million Americans are touched by aneurysms during their lifetimes. This is one story of love. Brainstorm is the candid and powerful memoir of the author's harrowing experience of an aneurysm and his road to recovery. It is a journey of love and devotion and a clash of medical beliefs and countercultures.

It begins with numbness on her left leg. Then it spreads. Even though an MRI finds a "mass" on her brainstem, it takes two more years for Meredith O'Brien to learn what is causing that numbness. Months after her sixty-five-year-old mother dies from a fast-moving cancer, weeks after her father is hospitalized and she experiences an unexpected job change, she learns she has multiple sclerosis. Suddenly, Meredith, a married mother of three teens, has to figure out how to move forward into a life she no longer recognizes.

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.

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.

On the morning of December 22, 2005, New York City firefighter Matt Long was cycling to work when he was struck by and sucked under a 20-ton bus making an illegal turn. The injuries he sustained pushed him within inches of death. Miraculously, after five months in the hospital and more than 40 operations, Matt was able to start his recovery. This book chronicles Matt's road to recovery as he teaches himself to walk again and, a mere three years later, to run in the 2008 New York City Marathon.

Dr Dave Walker was a successful anesthesiologist with a special interest in the intensive care unit (ICU). Disillusioned with God after a series of tragedies, he was living for himself and his work. Yet he longed for more than just physical healing for his patients, which set him on a quest to find a God who cared. After a dramatic encounter, he started praying with his patients.

People from all walks of life call 911 when things go bad. These are their stories, told by the people who respond and make things better. First responders often don't tell stories, preferring to keep what happens at work private. Rescue Captain Michael Morse changes that with these heartfelt descriptions of hundreds of emergency calls, with the usual coverings peeled back, exposing the bizarre, heartbreaking, and often hilarious reactions to 911 emergencies.

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.

In this new book, Kidder gives us the superb story of a hero for our time. Strength in What Remains is a wonderfully written, inspiring account of one man’s remarkable American journey and of the ordinary people who helped him–a brilliant testament to the power of will and of second chances.

Issa Ibrahim's memoir details in searing prose his development of severe mental illness leading to a horrific family tragedy, his acquittal by reason of insanity, and his subsequent commission to a mental hospital for nearly 20 years. Written with great verve and immediacy, The Hospital Always Wins paints a detailed picture of a broken mental-health system but also reveals the power of art, when nurtured in a benign environment, to provide a resource for recovery.

On October 13, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying members of the "Old Christians" rugby team - and many of their friends and family members - crashed into the Andes Mountains. I Had to Survive offers a gripping and heartrending recollection of the harrowing, brink-of-death experience that propelled survivor Roberto Canessa to become one of the world's leading pediatric cardiologists.

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.

Death was conspicuously absent during Rachel's medical training. Instead, her education focused entirely on learning to save lives, and was left wanting when it came to helping patients and their families face death. She came to specialize in palliative medicine because it is the one specialty in which the quality, not quantity of life truly matters. In the same year she started to work in a hospice, Rachel was forced to face tragedy in her own life when her father was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

Since it was first published in 1995, The Wounded Storyteller has occupied a unique place in the body of work on illness. Both the collective portrait of a so-called "remission society" of those who suffer from some type of illness or disability and a cogent analysis of their stories within a larger framework of narrative theory, Frank's book has reached a large and diverse following, including the ill, medical professionals, and scholars of literary theory. In this new edition, Frank adds a preface describing the personal and cultural times when the first edition was written.

In this harrowing and intimate memoir, Harriet Alida Lye explores how, at just 15 years old, she was diagnosed with a form of leukemia called Natural Killer, named "the rarest and worst malignancy". The average survival time of patients with this diagnosis is 58 days. There are no known survivors. There were no known survivors. Fifteen years after Harriet's diagnosis, she became pregnant, despite having been told that her chemotherapy treatment would likely make conception impossible. To be a mother is to make a death, as death is bound up in life.

Winner of the 2019 Silver Nautilus Book Award, Identity Theft centers on Debra’s experience: her stroke, her extraordinary efforts to recover, and her journey to redefine herself. But she also draws on her skills as a social scientist, sharing stories from several dozen fellow survivors, family members, friends, colleagues, therapists, and doctors she has met and interviewed. By sharing this diversity of experiences, Debra highlights how every person is different, every stroke is different, and every recovery is different.