Medical Memoirs

Critically acclaimed poet Alex “Happy” Lemon takes listeners on a journey of addiction, tragedy, and survival in this memoir. With an aneurysm in his brain, Lemon becomes trapped within the wreckage of his 19-year-old, stroke-ravaged body. But as he plunges into depression and longs for death, his mom’s life-affirming determination urges him to talk and walk and live again.

The internationally famous bandleader Peter Duchin's six decades of performing have taken him to the most exclusive dance floors and concert halls in the world. He has played for presidents, kings, and queens, as well as for civil rights and cultural organizations. But in 2013, Duchin suffered a stroke that left him with limited use of his left hand, severely impacting his career. Days of recuperating from his stroke - and later from a critical case of Covid-19 - inspired Duchin to reconsider his complicated past.

Ride along with the calm and measured paramedics of 1980s ambulance work as they navigate speed and gore. Chronicled are the memories of a boy who followed the sirens' call into manhood, utilizing grit and imagination to overcome hidden deficits. Ambulance Man is the sometimes funny, sometimes frightening, but always heartfelt story of a young man's entry into ambulance work.

In Life After Medical School, Dr. Bill Truels presents a compilation of both humorous and serious short stories and poems depicting his 50 years of experience as a practicing physician. Written initially for medical students and health care workers, these accounts have become popular with the general public, and anyone with a career that threatens to overtake their family life.

Our existence is fragile. The being we are today may not be the same tomorrow. I learned that in many intricate ways, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, so I do not take today for granted. On the eve of Thanksgiving 2016, I received the diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. I have survived over three years now. But I do not know what tomorrow will bring. I do not even know if tomorrow will come.

I think everyone can relate to the physical evolution from childhood to adolescence, which Dr. Stallworth describes with humor and self-reflection. By the end of this audiobook, the listener has a measure of the distance traveled over the years. He shares the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can learn from it, and once you begin listening, it is hard to stop. This is Dr. Stallworth’s first book since retiring in 2017, after 45 years of medical practice as an anesthesiologist in Los Angeles. He has pursued his passion for writing since 2017.

Dialysis: a Memoir tells the story of how a young woman's life is changed forever when her kidneys fail. From hospitalization and hemodialysis to peritoneal dialysis and finally to a transplant, the memoir explores how her experience of illness clashes with the world around her: the buoyant and youthful atmosphere of the San Francisco Bay Area during the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s. The memoir describes how she learns to make sense of what happened and how she ultimately overcomes the physical and emotional challenges of kidney failure to thrive in her new life.

Nearly one in every five Americans deals with mental illness in a given year, and the rates are climbing. Among physicians, the rate is even higher as the time spent in medical training significantly increases the risk of poor mental health. None of us is fully immune from the ravages of mental health problems. This book is about the fallibility of us all, including the doctors who are supposed to care for us. It is about the fine line of illness and normal emotion and about how to change the norms of medical practice in light of human weakness.

It's Saturday, and everything is different. No, I didn't go to the market this morning, and I didn't have my usual coffee on Westerstraat. And no, I wasn't getting ready for a new semester at college. Next Monday, January 31, I have to admit myself at the hospital for my first chemotherapy session. For the next two months, I'm expected each week for a fresh shot of vincristine, etoposide, ifosfamide, and loads more exciting abracadabra.

Anna was living a normal life. She was ambitious and worked hard; she had just bought an apartment; she was falling in love. But then she started to develop worrying symptoms: her face felt like it was burning whenever she was in front of the computer. Soon this progressed to an intolerance of fluorescent light, then of sunlight itself. The reaction soon spread to her entire body.

At nineteen years old, Nicole C. Kear's biggest concern is choosing a major - until she walks into a doctor's office in midtown Manhattan and gets a life-changing diagnosis. She is going blind, courtesy of an eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa, and has only a decade or so before lights-out. Instead of making preparations as the doctor suggests, Kear decides to carpe diem and make the most of the vision she has left. She joins a circus school, tears through boyfriends, travels the world, and through all these high jinks, she keeps her vision loss a secret.

Carolyn Jourdan spent many years as a congressional lawyer in Washington, D.C. Then she was called home to fill in for her mother as receptionist at her father's rural Tennessee doctor's office - assured it would only be for a few days.

After a tumor bursts in Mike Scalise's brain, leaving him with a hole in the head and malfunctioning hormones, he must navigate a new alien world of illness maintenance. His mother, who has a chronic heart condition and a flair for drama, becomes a complicated model as she competes with him for the status of "best sick person". The Brand New Catastrophe is a moving, funny exploration of how we define ourselves by the stories we choose to tell.

Hilarious and heartbreaking, profane and profound, It Takes a Worried Man is the true story of a young husband and father whose life is changed forever by his wife’s breast cancer diagnosis. Following Brendan Halpin’s cranky, irreverent, and lustful thoughts through the diagnosis and treatment of his wife, Kirsten, It Takes a Worried Man is an unflinching and raw look at how cancer transforms a family. It’s also the funniest book about cancer you’ll ever read.

I got into medical school by saying I was black. I lied. Honestly, I am about as black as my sister Mindy Kaling. Once upon a time, I was an ethically challenged, hard-partying Indian-American frat boy enjoying my third year of college. That is until I realized I didn't have the grades or test scores to get into medical school. Legitimately.

September 25, 2012. Ted Neill picked up a knife to cut his wrists open and kill himself. Post hospitalization and treatment for major depressive disorder, he wrote Two Years of Wonder, a memoir based on his journey toward recovery. In it, he examines the experience that left him with such despair: living and working for two years at an orphanage for children with HIV/AIDS in Nairobi, Kenya.

Wyburn-Mason syndrome. Ever heard of it? Dan Jeffries has, and his insightful and hilarious memoir explores what it's like living with one of the world's rarest medical conditions - and then finding out you have another one. Told through an innovative new approach that combines the audiobook experience with modern technology, Me, Myself & Eye really lets the listener delve into Dan's life story.

More of: You can't make this stuff up. A collection of short true stories from the experiences that made me who I am. Some are serious, some funny, some sad, some empowering. Beginning with Prehospital care going to home health care. Next was a haunted nursing home, then the ER. There are stories that show WHY I can relate and some of the lessons I've learned. These stories are told in the first person because they all happened to me.

In January of 2021, I was given an “all clear” on my cancer. Nine months later my “all clear” turned into “two to four months to live”. To say that was a shock to me would be a gross understatement. The only way I could handle it mentally was to compartmentalize it in my mind and write about it.

This is the spellbinding tale of a mysterious doctor who revolutionized neonatal care more than 100 years ago and saved some 7,000 babies. Dr. Martin Couney's story is a kaleidoscopic ride through the intersection of ebullient entrepreneurship, enlightened pediatric care, and the wild culture of world's fairs at the beginning of the American Century.