What begins as a concussion with a diagnosed recovery time of seven-to-ten days becomes more than two years of debilitating pain with no apparent end and a string of unhelpful doctor and specialist visits. In the wreckage, jobs are canceled. Leases are broken. There is no second date. What’s left is Isabella, her body, and her pain. Because the source of her pain cannot be located within the body, she is told over and over that her pain is psychosomatic. And Isabella believes it, over and over. What follows is a surprisingly funny medical and spiritual journey, during which Isabella must learn to trust in all that she cannot see or quantify: her pain, God, and her inner voice. Everything fell apart and then something new emerged.

    It’s an inside look into the day-to-day challenges facing not only the patient, but also the caregivers. For many years, her father exhibited signs of dementia, eventually becoming too significant to ignore. Everything culminated during an incident one night, after which her father was taken away, never to return to his home again. The disease changed him every day until he was a stranger. Then, it stole his life. Through the initial days at home to hospital stays, living in a memory care unit, rehab stints and eventually hospice care, this book reveals many of the struggles encountered while facing Alzheimer’s in a world not quite ready for it. It is based on actual events depicted exactly as they happened while travelling the heartbreaking and harrowing road through this horrific illness. Its purpose is to give guidance and insight to others caring for loved ones with this terrible affliction, whether it is in providing helpful information, feelings of support or simply words of encouragement. Most importantly, the hope is that it will make the road for others an easier one to travel. May the many tears in this journey be the fortitude that helps others deal with the adversity from this overwhelming disease.

    You'll experience the rush of adrenaline and the pain of loss. You'll go beyond the lights and sirens to witness the instinct of intelligence, the courage and commitment that makes the EMT an unsung hero in one of the most vital and compelling medical dramas of our time.

    Their reactions inspired her to compile her experiences. The result was Call It, an entertaining and refreshingly honest memoir of her nursing career. Follow her in the adrenaline charged Emergency Department, the Intensive Care Unit and during her daily routine as an Infection Control Nurse. She also worked as a Quality Improvement nurse and Case Manager for the health insurance industry. The book details successes, failures and some great laughs in every area. Medical show afficionados will not be disappointed and student nurses might learn some valuable lessons and insight about potential career paths.

    In less than three days, she was paralyzed and could no longer breathe on her own. She was diagnosed with Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare autoimmune disorder that occurs when the body's immune system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system. She was admitted to the hospital, where she spent two and a half months in the intensive care unit on a ventilator. She couldn't move, she couldn't speak, and worst of all, she couldn't hold her newborn daughter. She felt like her life was over as she couldn't be the mother that she had always wanted to be. As the weeks went on, the paralysis began to wear off. And once she was able to breathe on her own again, she started on her road to recovery. With intense physiotherapy, she learned how to use her muscles again and eventually how to walk again. She was determined, and worked hard, and after a long four months in the hospital, she was able to reach her goal of getting back to her husband and daughter. Holly Gerlach shares her inspirational story, where she faced the most terrifying and challenging experiences of her life. The book follows her entire journey, starting with the beginning symptoms, through the many months she spent in the hospital. The story continues on well past her release from the hospital, where she fought to regain her independence and eventually got her life back.

    writes with humor, dripping Southern charm that you can’t miss.” (The Greenville Examiner). A collection of short stories from the author of Sean of the South, and Lyla. Columnist, humorist, and novelist, Sean Dietrich, is known for his commentary on life in the American South. In his newest work, Small Towns, Labradors, Barbecue, Biscuits, Beer, and Bibles, he delivers a set of quirky tales filled with smiles and a hefty dose of heart.

    As soon as they drive across Andalusia, they fall in love with its rugged beauty, whitewashed villages, red geraniums, giant aloes, and endless olive trees. After weeks of visiting ruins and dilapidated sheds advertised as homes, they find a little stone cottage in a mountain valley in the middle of nowhere. Equipped with everything that a romantic soul desires: a patio shaded by grape vines, an ancient bay leaf tree, and a formidable oak in front of a long driveway, they fall in love with this property and decide to reform it into a guest house. With little foresight or planning, they exchange cushy expats lives for a life in the sun.Quite quickly, however, they find themselves battling cowboy builders, no electricity, a dry well, torrential rain storms, and a freezing cold winter without a roof over their heads. Through all these adventures, they develop relations with their neighbours who had lived in the valley for many generations. Puzzled by the strangers’ behaviour, the neighbours teach them about olive picking, and the cultivation of local vegetables. But primarily, they offer their endless generosity and insight into life in rural Andalusia.As they begin to settle in, financial problems confront our somewhat naïve couple. Without steady pay checks and construction bills piling up, their idea of the good life starts to fall apart. Written with a wry sense of honest humour, this story is filled with twists and turns that take the reader on a journey from a life where every day was monotonously repetitive to a place where every day presents a new challenge.

    

    He followed his head over his gut and Karina was left permanently paralysed, altering both patient and surgeon's lives for ever. This decision would haunt Rahul for decades, a constant reminder of the fine line between saving and damaging a life.As one of the world's leading brain surgeons, Rahul is the last hope for patients with extreme forms of cancer. In treating them, he has observed humanity at its most raw and most robust. He has journeyed to unimaginable extremes with them, guiding them through the darkest moments of their lives.Life on a Knife's Edge is Rahul's beautifully written account of the resilience, courage and belief he has witnessed in his patients, and the lessons about human nature he has learned from them. It is about the impossible choices he has to make, and the fateful consequences he is forced to live with.From challenging the ethics of surgical practices, to helping a patient with locked-in syndrome communicate her dying wish to her family, Rahul shares his extraordinary experiences, revealing the depths of a surgeon's psyche that is continuously pushed to its limits.

    Get paid to travel and write about it.Only no one told Jules that it would mean eating oily seabirds, repeatedly falling off a husky sled, getting stranded on a Mediterranean island, and crash-landing in Iran.The exotic destinations come thick and fast – Hong Kong, Hawaii, Huddersfield – as Jules navigates what it means to be a travel writer in a world with endless surprises up its sleeve.Add in a cast of larger-than-life characters – Elvis, Captain Cook, his own travel-mad Dad – and an eye for the ridiculous, and this journey with Jules is one you won’t want to miss.

    This is a deeply felt memoir about motherhood, survival and learning to live for whatever life throws at you." CLOVER STROUD, author of The Wild OtherAn extraordinary story of facing life s multiple (!) trials with love, resilience and courage, told in Emma s warm, funny and unflinchingly honest style. AMY McCULLOCH, author of Jinxed and The Potion DiariesWith four children (three of them triplets!) and a relationship break-up to contend with, some things get a little lost in the mix. Like symptoms. Emma Campbell bravely and honestly offers heartfelt thoughts on what happens when cancer becomes an unwelcome guest at an already crowded party. She shares her own terror and pain, mixed with the heartwarming and unexpected. The extraordinary kindness of people and the gritty detail of battling a life-threatening illness, all while being a single mum to four children. She opens up about her angels and demons, losing and then finding love again, a constant fear of death mixed with the joy and relief of living, the anxiety of cancer returning - then facing it when it does. This book has grown from Emma's blog Me And My Four. Eager to share with her followers in more detail, the secrets, the fears, the triumphs and the terrors that she faces each day, in a life as unpredictable as your own...www.meandmyfour.com

    Join first responders and ER doctors as they encounter life-or-death situations, putting their training and beliefs to the test. Be uplifted as you meet real-life angels, such as Elton, a daring highway patrolman who risks it all to prevent disaster James, the orthopedic tech with a God-given talent for mending hearts Shep, a principled fire captain whose most important lesson spares one of his own Denton, the tireless paramedic who rescues an injured man...from a hospital Maybelle, a faithful nursery volunteer who makes a life-saving diagnosis As you read these heart-pounding stories of faith in the face of impossible odds, you'll be reminded that a loving and merciful God appoints angels, those you can and cannot see, to watch over you and intervene on your behalf.

    Mark Plaster takes readers beyond the ambulance bay doors into the stranger-than-fiction world of the Emergency Department. By turns heart-warming and gut-wrenching, "Night Shift" chronicles the ebb and flow of human life, in all of its unvarnished glory, as it passes through the doors of the ED.

    Walt Larimore moved his young family to Kissimmee, Florida, to start a small-town medical practice in 1985, he had no idea he was embarking on an enterprise that would change his life in ways both large and small. But there's no telling what you'll run into as a family physician in a rural, small-town community.Perfect for anyone yearning for a simpler, slower pace of life, as well as fans of Dr. Larimore's popular Bryson City series, The Best Medicine is a tender and insightful collection of stories chronicling one young doctor's passage from inexperience to maturity as a physician, husband, father, and community member. Filled with characters colorful and crusty, warm-hearted and hot-headed, witty and winsome, these captivating stories glow with warmth, love, and humor. You'll laugh, you'll cry, and you'll wish Dr. Larimore was your doctor.

     A powerful true story revealing a remarkable relationship between a dying son - and a mother that refuses to let him go. At the age of 10, Deryn was diagnosed with Leukaemia. Then 18 months later he developed another rare form of cancer called Langerhan’s cell sarcoma. Only five other people in the world have it. He is the youngest of them all and the only person in the world known to be fighting it alongside another cancer, making him one in seven billion. Told there was no hope of survival, after four years of intensive treatment, exhausted by his fight and with just days left to live, Deryn planned his own funeral. But, Deryn’s desperate mother, Callie would not let him give in. Battling medical errors, impossible odds and years of hardship as the cancer consumed his body and their world, they looked for more answers. After making some startling discoveries and taking massive chances - something began to change… Would their lives as a family ever be the same again?