Book picks similar to
Puswhisperer: A Year in the Life of an Infectious Disease Doctor by Mark Crislip
science
nonfiction
medical
medicine
Fragile: Beauty in Chaos, Grace in Tragedy, and Hope that Lives In Between
Shannon Sovndal - 2020
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.
Girl Logic: The Genius and the Absurdity
Iliza Shlesinger - 2017
Why cope with insecurities I don't already have?That last one's just me? All right, then.But if the rest sounds familiar, you are experiencing Girl Logic: a characteristically female way of thinking that appears contradictory and circuitous but is actually a complicated and highly evolved way of looking at the world. You end up considering every repercussion of every choice (about dating, career, clothes, lunch) before making a move toward what you really want. And why do we attempt these mental hurdles? Well, that's what this book is all about.The fact is, whether you're obsessing over his last text or the most important meeting of your career, your Girl Logic serves a purpose: It helps push you, question what you want, and clarify what will make you a happier, better person. Girl Logic can be every confident woman's secret weapon, and this book shows you how to wield it.
Patient by Patient: Lessons in Love, Loss, Hope, and Healing from a Doctor's Practice
Emily R. Transue - 2008
Transue began chronicling her experiences in her memoir of residency, On Call, and she continues her education here but the source of her knowledge about love, loss, hope and healing are not medical texts or professors but the patients she treats and gets to know – those she helps to wellness and those she must let go.
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
Sheri Fink - 2013
Months later, several health professionals faced criminal allegations that they deliberately injected numerous patients with drugs to hasten their deaths. Five Days at Memorial, the culmination of six years of reporting, unspools the mystery of what happened in those days, bringing the reader into a hospital fighting for its life and into a conversation about the most terrifying form of health care rationing.In a voice at once involving and fair, masterful and intimate, Fink exposes the hidden dilemmas of end-of-life care and reveals just how ill-prepared we are in America for the impact of large-scale disasters—and how we can do better. A remarkable book, engrossing from start to finish, Five Days at Memorial radically transforms your understanding of human nature in crisis.
Ali in Wonderland: And Other Tall Tales
Ali Wentworth - 2012
Chelsea Handler, 1.5 oz. Nora Ephron, finish with a twist of Tina Fey, and you get Ali in Wonderland, the uproarious, revealing, and heartfelt memoir from acclaimed actress and comedian Ali Wentworth. Whether spilling secrets about her quintessentially WASPy upbringing (and her delicious rebellion against it), reminiscing about her Seinfeld “Schmoopie” days and her appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, or baring the details of starting a family alongside husband George Stephanopoulos, one thing is for sure—Ali has the unsurpassable humor and warmth of a born storyteller with a story to tell: the quirky, flavorful, surprising, and sometimes scandalous Ali in Wonderland.“Ali Wentworth is funny and warm and crazy all at once. Like Barbara Eden. But on something. Like crystal meth.” —Alec Baldwin
En Route: A Paramedic's Stories of Life, Death, and Everything in Between
Steven "Kelly" Grayson - 2005
When hearts stop working, when blood alcohol levels exceed limits we shouldn't contemplate, when bodies are extricated from car wrecks, he's been there to pick up the pieces, save our lives, and watch us slip away. His touching stories of life and death and the hilarious ones of times in between are here to give us an insight of what happens after we call 911, the ambulance doors close, or even what happens inside the ER when the nurse shows the family to the waiting room.
The Man Who Grew Two Breasts: And Other True Tales of Medical Detection
Berton Roueché - 1995
At his death last spring, Roueche left behind seven new narratives that have never been published in book form. This book collects these works along with one earlier classic--all relating true tales of strange illnesses, rare diseases, and the brilliant minds who race to understand and conquer them.
Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World--Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It
Ken Alibek - 1999
Smallpox. Incurable and horrifying Ebola-related fevers. For two decades, while a fearful world prepared for nuclear winter, an elite team of Russian bioweaponeers began to till a new killing field: a bleak tract sown with powerful seeds of mass destruction—by doctors who had committed themselves to creating a biological Armageddon. Biohazard is the never-before-told story of Russia’s darkest, deadliest, and most closely guarded Cold War secret. No one knows more about Russia’s astounding experiments with biowarfare than Ken Alibek. Now the mastermind behind Russia’s germ warfare effort reveals two decades of shocking breakthroughs . . . how Moscow’s leading scientists actually reengineered hazardous microbes to make them even more virulent . . . the secrets behind the discovery of an invisible, untraceable new class of biological agents just right for use in political assassinations . . . the startling story behind Russia’s attempt to turn a sample of the AIDS virus into the ultimate bioweapon. And in a chilling work of real-world intrigue, Biohazard offers us all a rare glimpse into a shadowy scientific underworld where doctors manufacture mass destruction, where witnesses to errors are silenced forever, and where ground zero is closer than we ever dared believe.
Moranthology
Caitlin Moran - 2012
These other subjects include...Caffeine | Ghostbusters | Being Poor | Twitter | Caravans | Obama | Wales | Paul McCartney | The Welfare State | Sherlock | David Cameron Looking Like Ham | Amy Winehouse | ‘The Big Society’ | Big Hair | Nutter-letters | Michael Jackson's funeral | Failed Nicknames | Wolverhampton | Squirrels’ Testicles | Sexy Tax | Binge-drinking | Chivalry | Rihanna’s Cardigan | Party Bags | Hot People| Transsexuals | The Gay Moon Landings
Patient Care: Death and Life in the Emergency Room
Paul Seward - 2018
Paul Seward leads us in his memoir through suspenseful diagnoses and explorations of anatomy. By his side, we learn to distinguish nursemaid's elbow from a true broken arm. We learn how our breathing and swallowing mechanisms resemble a practical joke.But when a baby’s heart stops and a young doctor forgets what to do, the situation is far from funny. Within the conditions of great stress and rapid decision-making that are routine in the ER, Dr. Seward shows us that physicians must be more than technicians of the body; they must be restorers of the human. Whether it is comforting anxious family or subjecting a distressed patient to tough procedures—resulting, once, in a patient’s punching our doctor—on every shift, a physician learns the difficult work of caring for strangers.Yet this is a physician who rejects doctor-as-god narratives. He highlights the essential role of nurses and other colleagues, including a pharmacist whose story is hard to forget. Throughout Patient Care, Dr. Seward reflects on how a life in medicine tests what it means to put ethics into practice.
Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs
Michael T. Osterholm - 2017
And as outbreaks of COVID-19, Ebola, MERS, and Zika have demonstrated, we are woefully underprepared to deal with the fallout. So what can -- and must -- we do in order to protect ourselves from mankind's deadliest enemy?Drawing on the latest medical science, case studies, policy research, and hard-earned epidemiological lessons, Deadliest Enemy explores the resources and programs we need to develop if we are to keep ourselves safe from infectious disease. The authors show how we could wake up to a reality in which many antibiotics no longer cure, bioterror is a certainty, and the threat of a disastrous influenza or coronavirus pandemic looms ever larger. Only by understanding the challenges we face can we prevent the unthinkable from becoming the inevitable.Deadliest Enemy is high scientific drama, a chronicle of medical mystery and discovery, a reality check, and a practical plan of action.
Against Medical Advice
James Patterson - 2008
From that day forward his life became a hell of uncontrollable tics, urges, and involuntary utterances. Eventually he is diagnosed with Tourette's Syndrome and Obsessive Compulsive disorder, and Cory embarks on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist, enduring countless combinations of medications in wildly varying doses. Soon it becomes unclear what tics are symptoms of his disease and what are side effects of the drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Despite his lack of control, Cory is aware of every embarrassing movement, and sensitive to every person's reaction to his often aggravating presence. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life is a living hell.Against Medical Advice is the true story of one family's decades-long battle for survival in the face of extraordinary difficulties and a rigid medical establishment.
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
Richard P. Feynman - 1985
Here he recounts in his inimitable voice his experience trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and Bohr and ideas on gambling with Nick the Greek; cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets; accompanying a ballet on his bongo drums; painting a naked female toreador. In short, here is Feynman's life in all its eccentric—a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
The Sum of My Parts
James Sanford - 2011
At first I tried to deny my condition (trying to treat a tumor with hot baths and ice packs). Eventually, I decided I would learn as much about my illness as possible while trying to keep my emotions on hold.What followed was an experience that finally forced me to deal with issues about my body that I had tried to ignore for decades. Along the way I dealt with a physician who gave me ridiculous advice and acquaintances who asked unbelievable questions. But I was also fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me and doctors who helped me through the process.
It's All in Your Head
Suzanne O'Sullivan - 2015
A neurologist's insightful and compassionate look into the misunderstood world of psychosomatic disorders, told through individual case histories