Oliver Sacks's books Awakenings, An Anthropologist on Mars and the bestselling The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat have been acclaimed for their extraordinary compassion in the treatment of patients affected with profound disorders. In A Leg to Stand On, it is Sacks himself who is the patient: an encounter with a bull on a desolate mountain in Norway has left him with a severely damaged leg. But what should be a routine recuperation is actually the beginning of a strange medical journey when he finds that his leg uncannily no longer feels part of his body. Sacks's brilliant description of his crisis and eventual recovery is not only an illuminating examination of the experience of patienthood and the inner nature of illness and health but also a fascinating exploration of the physical basis of identity.

    At the time of my arrest, I was a thirty-seven year old Harvard graduate with medical and post-doctoral degrees. I attended one of the finest residency and fellowship training programs in the world at the University of California, San Francisco. I played two sports in college, earned awards at every level of education and training, had wonderful friends and a beautiful three-year-old daughter. Having grown up the son of a restaurant manager and a housewife, I had transcended the humble beginnings of a small Midwestern town to become the quintessential American Dream.Or so I thought. But with my arrest on felony importation charges, everything I had worked so hard for was swept away and the entire trajectory of my life was indelibly altered. I would embark on a three year battle not only for my medical license, but also for my freedom. This journey would lead to intense personal introspection, and in that process, I would discover with ugliness, there was also beauty, and with punishment, mercy.There are many reasons I have written this manuscript, with one of the most important being that I hoped my story would resonate with others who have gone through difficult circumstances as a consequence of a dark side of their personality. With this book, I hope to inspire others to accept and embrace the good and bad, while continually striving for improved self-understanding and acceptance.I have changed names primarily for legal purposes, but the facts are unchanged. Although the events described in the book occurred more than ten years ago, I think about them nearly every day. The shame and humiliation are ever-present. Any simple Google search of my name reveals the truth, and that truth has affected me over and over, despite the years, as it probably should. As the judge told me that day in a federal courtroom, "You have betrayed the public's trust." This is my confessional.

    What at first seemed like a case of food poisoning quickly turned critical, and by the time Tom had been transferred via emergency medevac to the world-class medical center at UC San Diego, where both he and Steffanie worked, blood work revealed why modern medicine was failing: Tom was fighting one of the most dangerous, antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the world.Frantic, Steffanie combed through research old and new and came across phage therapy: the idea that the right virus, aka "the perfect predator," can kill even the most lethal bacteria. Phage treatment had fallen out of favor almost 100 years ago, after antibiotic use went mainstream. Now, with time running out, Steffanie appealed to phage researchers all over the world for help. She found allies at the FDA, researchers from Texas A&M, and a clandestine Navy biomedical center -- and together they resurrected a forgotten cure.

    He was given four years to live. In 2010, in a state of lung-function collapse, Simon knew with crystal clarity that now was not his time to die. Against all prevailing medical opinion, he chose to ventilate in order to stay alive.Here, the young filmmaker, a husband and father of five small children draws us deeply into his inner world. Told in simply expressed and beautifully stark prose - in the vein of such memoirs as Jean-Dominique Bauby's The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - the result is an astonishing journey into a life which, though brutally compromised, is lived more fully and in the moment than most, revealing at its core the power of love its most potent.Written using an eye-gaze computer, It's Not Yet Dark is an unforgettable book about relationships and family, about what connects and separates us as people and, ultimately, about what it means to be alive.

    For most of that time, she didn't know why. All of her trips to the ER and her daily anguish, pain, and lethargy only ever resulted in one question: How could any one person be this sick? Several drug addictions, three major hospitalizations, and over $100,000 later, she finally had a diagnosis: late-stage Lyme disease. Sick is Khakpour's arduous, emotional journey—as a woman, a writer, and a lifelong sufferer of undiagnosed health problems—through the chronic illness that perpetually left her a victim of anxiety, living a life stymied by an unknown condition.Divided by settings, Khakpour guides the reader through her illness by way of the locations that changed her course—New York, LA, New Mexico, and Germany—as she meditates on both the physical and psychological impacts of uncertainty, and the eventual challenge of accepting the diagnosis she had searched for over the course of her adult life. With candor and grace, she examines her subsequent struggles with mental illness, her addiction to the benzodiazepines prescribed by her psychiatrists, and her ever-deteriorating physical health. A story about survival, pain, and transformation, Sick is a candid, illuminating narrative of hope and uncertainty, boldly examining the deep impact of illness on one woman's life.

    The next morning, things take a sharp turn as she’s led from work to the emergency room. By the end of the week, a neurologist delivers a devastating prognosis: Sarah suffered a traumatic brain injury that has caused her IQ to plummet, with no hope of recovery. Her brain has irrevocably changed.Afraid of judgment and deemed no longer fit for work, Sarah isolates herself from the outside world. She spends months at home, with her dogs as her only source of companionship, battling a personality she no longer recognizes and her shock and rage over losing simple functions she’d taken for granted. Her life is consumed by fear and shame until a chance encounter gives Sarah hope that her brain can heal. That conversation lights a small flame of determination, and Sarah begins to push back, painstakingly reteaching herself to read and write, and eventually reentering the workforce and a new, if unpredictable, life.In this highly intimate account of devastation and renewal, Sarah pulls back the curtain on life with traumatic brain injury, an affliction where the wounds are invisible and the lasting effects are often misunderstood. Over years of frustrating setbacks and uncertain triumphs, Sarah comes to terms with her disability and finds love with a woman who helps her embrace a new, accepting sense of self.

    From being the saviour of a man’s anus to being mistaken for the milkman, Tom describes the complexity and absurdity of today’s medical practice with humour and aplomb. Tom is a junior doctor working in the National Health Service. Tom Parsons is a pseudonym. * Amazon/Kindle/Fiction/Medical, March 2018

    He thought he was going in with his eyes wide open. Really, he had no clue. Nothing could prepare him for the harsh reality of being a compassionate human and working as an ER doctor. In his emotionally charged memoir, Sovndal examines the tenuous balance between trying to compartmentalize the trauma of tragedy while also preserving his own humanity. With candor and humility, Fragile pulls back the curtain on the ER, a place where Sovndal has learned that universal truths about the human condition can be discovered—if you pause long enough to take a breath. At turns heartbreaking and heartwarming, serious and funny, Sovndal’s memoir is about trying to reconcile the beautiful and horrific tension that makes life so fragile, and how accepting that hard truth opens us up to appreciate life’s most precious moments—which are often the ones most filled with connection, hope, and love.ABOUT THE AUTHOR:SHANNON SOVNDAL, MD, a board-certified doctor in both emergency medicine and emergency medical services (EMS), serves as a physician and medical director for multiple EMS agencies and fire departments. Dr. Sovndal has a wide range of career experience, working in tactical medicine (TEMS) with the FBI, as a team doctor for the Garmin Professional Cycling team, and as a flight physician. As the producer of the podcast Match on a Fire: Medicine and More, he is the founder of 3Hundred Training Group, which focuses on educating and training pre-hospital providers.Dr. Sovndal attended medical school at Columbia University, where he earned the prestigious Arnold P. Gold Foundation Humanism in Medicine Award, and completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at Stanford University. He is also the author of Cycling Anatomy and Fitness Cycling and lives in Boulder, Colorado, with his family.

    It is his first job in general practice; his first brave excursion into the dangerous world where patients walk round in their clothes. Dr Vernon soon finds himself bemused, fascinated and exhausted as he copes with the procession of ailing humanity that streams into his surgery and awaits his visits. A confused old lady, timid vet, puzzled diabetic, lonely housewife, hypochondriac, tipster with an ulcer, nun with dandruff and a persistent young lady with abundant charms and nothing wrong with her. Just published as an e book, exclusive to Amazon, this book was a huge hit in England and America when first published in the 1970s. Edward Vernon is a pen name of a well known British doctor/author.Here's what the critics said about the series:Thoroughly delightful - Fresno BeeHilarious - TitbitsA delightfully funny book that keeps the reader laughing and appeals to one's sense of the ridiculous - Sunday Advocate, Baton RougeFor entertainment, a chapter or two before bedtime is just what the doctor ordered - Sacramento BeeDoes for British GPs what Herriot has done for vets - BooklistHilarious, written with skill and zest - Grimsby Evening TelegraphVery funny - Citizen, GloucesterThoroughly enjoyable, genuinely funny - South Wales EchoWise, funny, sad and heartwarming - Chattanooga TimesGood fun - Homes and GardensMost of his adventures are funny, some hilarious; but he has the good sense to leven the comedy lump with some that are sad, some touching. All are written lightly, easily, entertainingly - Oxford TimesThe funniest of the funny doctor books - Richard GordonJolly good reading - Publishers WeeklyViews the human species he treats with much the same affection, compassion and humour as Herriot brings to the animal world - Cleveland Plain DealerSometimes serious, sometimes hilarious - Lancashire Evening PostTruthful, well observed and consistently readable - Daily TelegraphPerceptive and witty - Surrey AdvertiserWill amuse, amaze and entertain - Yorkshire Postetc etc

    EMERGENCY 24/7: Nurses of the Emergency Room, portrays thirty-one nurses, each with a distinctive voice and unique view of what really goes on behind the closed doors of the secret and chaotic world of the emergency room. Also included are the moment-by-moment chronicles of eleven nurses who worked in New York City and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001. These compelling accounts give new perspectives on the horrors and heroics of that tragic day. Ranging from inspiring to heart-rending to outrageously funny, these gripping narratives make EMERGENCY 24/7 a fascinating and provocative book—a fitting tribute to the frontline nurses.

    She'll take you searching for bodies of loved ones - through woodlands, along hedgerows, field-edges, and through plantations - solving time since death, and disposal of remains, from ditches to living rooms. She will give you glimpses of her own history: her loves, her losses, and the narrow little valley in Wales where she first woke up to the wonders of the natural world. Pat will show you how her work with a microscope reveals tell-tale traces of the world around us, and how these have taken suspects of the darkest criminal activities to court.From flowers, fungi, tree trunks to car pedals, walking boots, carpets, and corpses' hair, Traces is a unique book on life, death, and one's indelible link with nature.

    Born with achondroplasia, a condition that causes disproportionate dwarfism, Dylan Postl had endured multiple surgeries by the age of 12. And yet, he held on to the dream that he would one day become a professional wrestler. Ignoring the naysayers and against doctors' recommendations, Dylan began training in his teens, and he soon began appearing on local independent shows. Before he turned 20, he was signed by the world leader in sports-entertainment, WWE, to play the role of Irish grappler Finlay's feisty sidekick, Hornswoggle, and remained a firm fixture in the company for a full decade.While most of Dylan's adult life has been spent in the wild world of the wrestling industry, Life Is Short is more than a story of a little person's journey through a world of giants; it's a memoir of elation and anguish, triumph and disappointment, and of how an endlessly positive outlook combined with the unwavering support of family and friends helped him become a success in his industry and a loving, responsible father. It's a story about a man who still loves wrestling -- but loves his family above all else.

    Before long Diana and her partner, Jack Moody—new to being a couple—have moved into a long-empty jungle house, cohabitating with bats, scorpions, toucans, iguanas, and the vulnerable but resilient butterflies. She comes to be obsessed with the array of iridescent creatures.Just ahead, although they don’t know it, are a hurricane and a global pandemic.This warm, funny tale of finding a way forward when the world seems to be falling apart is filled with the beauty of the natural world and a heartfelt cry to protect it—beginning with butterflies.

    Jerri Nielsen, the only physician on a staff of forty-one people, discovered a lump in her breast. Consulting via satellite e-mail with doctors in the United States, she was forced to perform a biopsy and treat herself with chemotherapy in order to ensure that she could survive until conditions permitted her rescue. She was eventually rescued by the Air National Guard. Dr. Jerri Nielsens story of her transforming experiences is a thrilling adventure and moving drama. She has written a new chapter for this edition. Since the publication of Ice Bound in hardcover in January 2000, Dr. Nielsen has inspired people throughout the country, met hundreds of fans, received numerous awards including Irish American of the Year, which was presented to her by Hillary Clinton, as well as tremendous praise from the media.

    “I smoked in my twenties. I preferred red wine to sparkling water. I ate too much milk chocolate. I liked limericks. I know all the wrong I’ve done. But also, more than any of that, I’ve always longed for children.” Yet there she was: successful, social, mostly happy, and not a mother. Knowing that her chances of becoming pregnant naturally were quickly fading, Finn decided to gamble: she—like some 85,000 other women in the U.S. each year—would attempt in vitro fertilization. Almost three years later, she’s still trying, and in the process has become an accidental pioneer (and, at times, a guinea pig) in the ever-evolving science of IVF.“The Baby Chase” is a primer for anyone contemplating or undergoing IVF. More than that, it’s a story of longing, hope—and hormones—that will appeal to all parents, present and future.Finn’s engaging and honest account sheds light on a subject that few people who undergo IFV are willing to talk about: what happens when the science doesn’t work. “Usually, it’s only the people who come out on the other side, beaming, with a baby on one hip, who speak up about IVF,” she writes. “We never hear from those IVF has failed - it’s too crushing to talk about. We don’t hear from men and women in the middle of treatment, either.... People like me.”