Medical Memoirs

As an adult, National Public Radio foreign correspondent Jacki Lyden has spent her life on the front lines of some of the world's most dangerous war zones. As a child, she lived in a war zone of a different kind. Her mother, Dolores, suffered from what is now called manic depression. In her manic phases, Dolores became Marie Antoinette or the Queen of Sheba, exotically delusional, yet to young Jacki also transcendent, even inspiring. In time, Jacki grew to accept, even relish, Dolores' bizarre episodes, marveling at her mother's creative energy and using it to fuel her own.

As a happily married, 55-year-old professional woman, Susan had it all-or thought she did - until the day of her shocking diagnosis with stage IV Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a rare and aggressive disease. Ninety-eight percent of her bone marrow was cancerous, and a heart attack or brain aneurism was imminent. Within minutes of being admitted to the hospital, her beautifully ordinary life disappeared.

Helena Rho was six years old when her family left Seoul, Korea, for America and its opportunities. Years later, her Korean-ness behind her, Helena had everything a model minority was supposed to want: she was married to a white American doctor and had a beautiful home, two children, and a career as an assistant professor of pediatrics. For decades she fulfilled the expectations of others. All the while Helena kept silent about the traumas - both professional and personal - that left her anxious yet determined to escape.

Fleeing Communist Czechoslovakia with his wife Marica, Vilcek continued his research at NYU School of Medicine, going on to establish a highly successful career in biomedical research and creating one of the most important and trailblazing medicines of our age.

Citizen-Surgeon takes listeners into the otherwise inaccessible, remote, and intense world of life and surgery within a combat zone. In the backdrop of the US-led war in Afghanistan, amid a defining US Marine Corps’ offensive to conquer the Marjah region of Helmand Province, [then] US Navy Commander Paul Roach and his company-mates assemble and congeal as a medical unit in Southern California, transport from the United States to their tents in Dasht-e-Margo (the “Desert of Death”) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

Join Dr. Nesheiwat on an extraordinary journey of compassion and faith in Beyond the Stethoscope: Miracles in Medicine where gripping stories of miraculous recoveries, experiences in the ER, and global medical missions illuminate the transformative power of prayer and unwavering dedication to healing and service. Dr. Janette is among the frontline workers helping to get people through these dark moments—her greatest lifeline being her family and the power of God’s love.

"המוח שלי ואני", ספר שעליו עמל דורון נשר בשמונה השנים האחרונות, הוא רומן אוטוביוגרפי אחר לגמרי – מעשה ספרותי שמספק הזדמנות חד־פעמית לעקוב אחרי התמודדות פיזית ונפשית עם פגיעה מוחית. נשר, מכוכבי הטלוויזיה והרדיו הגדולים של שנות השמונים והתשעים בישראל, חושף בספר את חוויותיו האישיות מרגעי ההתעוררות הראשונים, דרך ימי האשפוז בבית לוינשטיין ולאורך חיי יומיום רצופים רגעי ייאוש מתסכלים והצלחות קטנות ומפעימות.

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.

At 32, Amy Boesky thought she had it all figured out: a wonderful new man in her life, a great job, and the (nearly) perfect home. For once, she was almost able to shake the terrible fear that had gripped her for as long as she could remember. All of the women in her family had died before the age of 45 - from cancer - and she and her sisters had grown up in time's shadow.

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.

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.

Just three days after he was born, Howard Shulman contracted an infection that attacked his face, devouring his nose, lips, lower right eyelid, tear ducts, and palate. Abandoned at the hospital by his parents, he became a ward of New Jersey under the care of a state-employed surgeon who experimentally rebuilt his face.

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.

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.

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.

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.