Book picks similar to
Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial by Allie Cashel
nonfiction
lyme
health
autobiography
Unlocking Lyme: Myths, Truths, and Practical Solutions for Chronic Lyme Disease
William Rawls - 2017
Bill Rawls understands Lyme disease sufferers seeking clarity and relief because, like myself, he has experienced the pain and frustration firsthand. Through this ground-breaking book, he shares everything he has discovered on his journey to reclaiming his health... it may just be the answer you've been waiting for." – Neil Spector, MD, Author of Gone in a Heartbeat Lyme disease is one of the most puzzling illnesses on the planet. Anyone who has suffered from its debilitating symptoms knows the frustrations of trying to find a cure. Many sufferers drag themselves from one doctor or alternative practitioner to the next, getting lost in a maze of lab tests, prescription drugs, and treatments. Thousands of dollars and months (or years) later, they realize they are no better off than where they started. Unlocking Lyme puts an end to this desperate quest. Written by Dr. Bill Rawls, a physician who overcame Lyme disease himself, this book is a comprehensive, practical resource full of solutions that work. What took Dr. Rawls 10 years to learn through intense research and personal experience, you can now learn and implement in a matter of months. DR. RAWLS’ STORY Dr. Rawls was in the middle of a successful OB/GYN career when Lyme disease interrupted his life. In his struggle to overcome it, he explored every treatment option – from conventional medicine to the full range of alternative therapies. Ultimately, he embraced modern herbal therapy as his preferred solution, but he recognizes that the path may be different for each person. INSIDE THE BOOK Unlocking Lyme is the sum of Dr. Rawls’ experience, research, and practical solutions to date. The book is divided into four parts, each part addressing a critical aspect of recovery: PART 1 - Provides an overview of common misconceptions about what Lyme disease is (hint: it’s more than just a tick bite and Borrelia infection) PART 2 - Provides information on how to obtain a diagnosis, despite current limitations in diagnostic testing for Lyme PART 3 - Discusses limitations of long-term antibiotic use, and offers an overview of holistic and non-toxic therapies for healing and symptom control (including pain, depression, insomnia) PART 4 - Explains how to embrace a healthier lifestyle so you can stay well; learn how to strengthen your immune system, microbiome, and balance in your body In the years since his recovery, Dr. Rawls has helped thousands of patients find their path to healing from Lyme disease. Unlocking Lyme brings together Dr. Rawls’ accumulated knowledge and is the key you need to get your life back. TESTIMONIALS “Dr. Rawls understands the misery of chronic Lyme disease firsthand. Unlocking Lyme shares the approaches that he used to successfully recover his own health, and helps the reader understand that there is so much that can be done to regain a state of wellness and optimal health.” – Scott Forsgren Editor & Founder, BetterHealthGuy.com “Dr. Rawls has spoken on his approach to Lyme disease for the past several years; his comprehensive approach and lifestyle guidance has helped many of our members. We heartily endorse his approach to helping deal with the symptoms of Lyme and other tick-borne illnesses.” – John Dorney, President NC Lyme Disease Foundation "Unlocking Lyme delves into the science behind Lyme disease, explaining what it is, but more importantly how it can be overcome. Dr. Rawls carefully explains the various treatments for Lyme, leaving the reader feeling informed and empowered.
Red Blanket: An uncensored memoir that reveals the underbelly of surgical training
John Harch - 2020
Gone in a Heartbeat: A Physician's Search for True Healing
Neil Spector - 2015
Neil Spector, one of the nation's top oncologists, led a charmed life. He was educated at prestigious universities, trained at top medical centers, and had married the woman of his dreams. It seemed too perfect. And it was.In 1994, it all came crashing down. He and his wife lost two unborn children. And a mysterious illness brought him to the brink of death. In his compelling memoir, Gone in a Heartbeat, Dr. Spector describes in great detail how he was misdiagnosed and, despite being a medical insider, was often discounted by his fellow physicians.As he recounts his own unorthodox approach to medicine and physician/patient relationships, Dr. Spector encourages readers to never surrender their power to a third party. He tells of courageous patients who served as role models, he conceded that doctors do a disservice to patients when "we treat them like statistics," and he advocates for educated patients who can make informed decisions collaboratively and not simply follow instructions. In Dr. Spector's words: "To recognize that we are in control of our own bodies and destinies can be a powerful step toward true healing."Readers of Gone in a Heartbeat will never view the medical profession the same again.
Cure Unknown: Inside the Lyme Epidemic
Pamela Weintraub - 2008
She also reveals her personal odyssey through the land of Lyme after she, her husband and their two sons became seriously ill with the disease beginning in the 1990s. From the microbe causing the infection and the definition of the disease, to the length and type of treatment and the kind of practitioner needed, Lyme is a hotbed of contention. With a CDC-estimated 200,000-plus new cases of Lyme disease a year, it has surpassed both AIDS and TB as the fastest-spreading infectious disease in the U.S. Yet alarmingly, in many cases, because the disease often eludes blood tests and not all patients exhibit the classic "bulls-eye" rash and swollen joints, doctors are woefully unable or unwilling to diagnose Lyme. When that happens, once-treatable infections become chronic, inexorably disseminating to cause disabling conditions that may never be cured. Weintraub reveals why the Lyme epidemic has been allowed to explode, why patients are dismissed, and what can be done to raise awareness in the medical community and find a cure. The most comprehensive book ever written about the past, present and future of Lyme disease, this exposes the ticking clock of a raging epidemic.
Stem Cell Therapy: A Rising Tide: How Stem Cells Are Disrupting Medicine and Transforming Lives
Neil H. Riordan - 2017
When there aren’t enough of them, or they aren’t working properly, chronic diseases can manifest and persist. From industry leaders, sport stars, and Hollywood icons to thousands of everyday, ordinary people, stem cell therapy has helped when standard medicine failed. Many of them had lost hope. These are their stories. Neil H Riordan, author of MSC: Clinical Evidence Leading Medicine’s Next Frontier, the definitive textbook on clinical stem cell therapy, brings you an easy-to-read book about how and why stem cells work, and why they’re the wave of the future. “Neil takes readers on a riveting journey through the past, present and future of stem cell therapy. His well-researched, educational and entertaining book could change your life. I highly recommend it.” Tony Robbins, NY Times #1 Bestselling Author 100 years old will soon become the new 60. Stem cells are a key therapeutic to enable this future. Dr. Riordan’s book is your guide to why this is true and how you will benefit. A must read for anyone who cares about extending their healthy lifespan.” Peter H. Diamandis, MD; Founder, XPRIZE & Singularity University; Co-Founder, Human Longevity, Inc.; Author of NY Times Best Sellers Abundance and Bold
Diary of a H.O. (House Officer): A Collection of Short Stories from a Surgeon's First Year of Training.
Brandon Green - 2020
The book offers insight into 21st century modern healthcare and the state of society. You will laugh, cry, and question your beliefs about the healthcare system and patients. Read this before you go to the doctor next and share this information with your family. Throughout the United States stories like these are unfolding each day as you witness the stress of physician training and the ups and downs of the physician's and patient's lives. Dr. Brandon Green is a pseudonym, or pen name, for author who wishes to remain anonymous. He is an Attending Surgeon at an inner-city Level 1 Trauma Center. The author's goals for writing this book include the following: 1.Create awareness and discussion about today’s healthcare and society. 2.Raise money with 30% of profits from the sale of this book being donated to healthcare non-profit organizations such as the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, and any current global medical pandemic funds. 3.Therapy for the author to recount the intern year, which was more stressful and educational than ever imagined. Unexpected emotions occurred and life lessons were taught beyond the surgical training. The short stories are real occurrences that happened to the author and his other two co-interns in one residency year. The author broke ties with the publisher who wanted to adjust the stories to meet societal norms, and now the work is being self published with profits as above going to charity instead of a large publishing company. The names and locations have been changed to provide privacy protection and follow HIPPA guidelines. The author hopes to continue dialogue and discussion on stories from behind the scenes at hospitals, clinics, and in the operating rooms. It's beneficial to communicate with colleagues and other healthcare professionals and staff running into similar circumstances on a day to day basis. Please visit DIARYOFAHO.COM and email your stories to be published on the website and social media.This is a work of sociology, psychology, medicine, surgery, dealing with the public, putting others ins front of yourself, and self-reflective learning. Any story will be accepted and uploaded into the blog and social media. Stories will be screened for HIPPA compliance prior to publishing online. Thank you for taking the time to read and understand what’s happening in modern healthcare training.
The Dirty Version: On Stage, In the Studio, and In the Streets with Ol' Dirty Bastard
Buddha Monk - 2014
ODB was one of the Clan’s wildest icons and most inventive performers, and when he died of an overdose in 2004 at the age of thirty-five, millions of fans mourned the loss. ODB lives on in epic proportions and his antics are legend: he once picked up his welfare check in a limousine; lifted a burning car off a four-year-old girl in Brooklyn; stole a fifty-dollar pair of sneakers on tour at the peak of his success. Many have questioned whether his stunts were carefully calculated or the result of paranoia and mental instability.Now, Dirty’s friend since childhood, Buddha Monk, a Wu-Tang collaborator on stage and in the studio, reveals the truth about the complex and talented performer. From their days together on the streets of Brooklyn to the meteoric rise of Wu-Tang’s star, from bouts in prison to court-mandated rehab, from Dirty’s favorite kind of pizza to his struggles with fame and success, Buddha tells the real story—The Dirty Version—of the legendary rapper.
Sleepwalker: The Mysterious Makings and Recovery of a Somnambulist
Kathleen Frazier - 2015
Eyes wide open. I was standing at an open window, staring at the dizzying curve of Riverside Drive, five floors below. I’d stopped, somehow, poised, about to jump.Growing up the good girl in an Irish American family full of drinkers and terrible sleepers, Kathleen Frazier was twelve when her seemingly innocent sleepwalking turned dangerous. Over the next few years, she was a popular A+ student by day, the star of her high school musical. At night, she both longed for and dreaded sleep.Frazier moved to Manhattan in the 1980s, hoping for a life in the theater but getting a run of sleepwalking performances instead. Efforts to abate her malady with drinking failed miserably. She became promiscuous, looking for nighttime companionship. Could a bed partner save her from flinging herself down a flight of stairs or out an open window? Exhaustion stalked her, and rest and love were seemingly out of reach.This is the journey Frazier illuminates in her intimate memoir. While highlighting her quest to beat her sleep terrors and insomnia, this is ultimately a story of health, hope, and redemption.
Prognosis: A Memoir of My Brain
Sarah Vallance - 2019
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.
Surgeon's Story - Inside OR-1 With One of America's Top Pediatric Surgeons
Mark Oristano - 2017
You’ll be there as Dr. Kristine Guleserian, noted pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon, fixes the tiny hearts of the tiniest children. Follow the young boy who gets a new heart and then, three weeks later, joins Dr. Guleserian on the mound at Fenway Park to throw out the first pitch at a World Series game. Discover the years of training Dr. G went through to become the highly respected surgeon she is today. See how her warmth, humor, intelligence and dedication provide a shining example of what is good about the American health care system. To get a closer look than this, you’d have to scrub in.
A Warrior's Heart: The True Story of Life Before and Beyond The Fighter
Micky Ward - 2012
But that was only part of the tale… Now, in his own words, “Irish” Micky Ward tells his inspirational life story as only he can. From his first bout at the age of seven, Micky Ward was known first and foremost for giving as good as he got, and for leaving absolutely everything he had in the ring. When he fought, quitting was never an option. It was that indomitable spirit that would allow him to survive, battle against, and overcome the harsh realities that he faced every day of his life.For it was outside the ring that Ward’s heart would be most needed, from witnessing his idolized older half-brother Dicky fall from grace, to dealing with his wildly dysfunctional—if frighteningly loyal—family, to the darkest of secrets that he has never revealed until now, and the numerous setbacks and defeats that would have stopped a lesser man. Micky Ward has remained a fighter, through and through—both as a professional boxer, and as a man who finally found his greatest strength in friendship, family, and faith in himselfFrom the rough streets of Lowell, Massachusetts, to the blood and sweat of the international fight game, to the bright lights and adulation of Hollywood, this is the rousing, moving, tragic, and humorous story of the one and only Micky Ward.
ER DOC: Defining Moments of a Career in Emergency Medicine
Reggie Duling - 2021
Pandemics: Our Fears and the Facts (Kindle Single)
Sunetra Gupta - 2013
As recently as 1918, a pandemic of influenza claimed over 50 million lives worldwide. The advent of drugs and vaccines led to an era of hope when we thought our battles with infectious disease were won, but our optimism has been eroded by the recognition that many pathogens have the capacity to transform themselves and escape our efforts to eradicate them. Are we now facing an inevitable repeat of a calamity such as the 1918 influenza pandemic or the Black Death? Can we anticipate and thwart such an event, or are we wilfully creating the conditions that would promote the emergence of new and highly virulent human infectious disease?Sunetra Gupta is Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford specialising in infectious diseases. She holds a bachelor's degree from Princeton University and a Ph.D. from the University of London. She has been awarded the Scientific Medal by the Zoological Society of London and the Royal Society Rosalind Franklin Award for her scientific research. She is also a novelist whose books have been awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, the Southern Arts Literature Prize, shortlisted for the Crossword Award, and longlisted for the DSC and Orange Prizes.
He Wanted the Moon: The Madness and Medical Genius of Dr. Perry Baird, and His Daughter's Quest to Know Him
Mimi Baird - 2015
Perry Baird was a rising medical star in the late 1920s and 1930s. Early in his career, ahead of his time, he grew fascinated with identifying the biochemical root of manic depression, just as he began to suffer from it himself. By the time the results of his groundbreaking experiments were published, Dr. Baird had been institutionalized multiple times, his medical license revoked, and his wife and daughters estranged. He later received a lobotomy and died from a consequent seizure, his research incomplete, his achievements unrecognized.Mimi Baird grew up never fully knowing this story, as her family went silent about the father who had been absent for most of her childhood. Decades later, a string of extraordinary coincidences led to the recovery of a manuscript which Dr. Baird had worked on throughout his brutal institutionalization, confinement, and escape. This remarkable document, reflecting periods of both manic exhilaration and clear-headed health, presents a startling portrait of a man who was a uniquely astute observer of his own condition, struggling with a disease for which there was no cure, racing against time to unlock the key to treatment before his illness became impossible to manage.Fifty years after being told her father would forever be “ill” and “away,” Mimi Baird set off on a quest to piece together the memoir and the man. In time her fingers became stained with the lead of the pencil he had used to write his manuscript, as she devoted herself to understanding who he was, why he disappeared, and what legacy she had inherited. The result of his extraordinary record and her journey to bring his name to light is He Wanted the Moon, an unforgettable testament to the reaches of the mind and the redeeming power of a determined heart.Soon to be a major motion picture, from Brad Pitt and Tony Kushner
Everything in Its Place: First Loves and Last Tales
Oliver Sacks - 2019
Everything in Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, all told with his characteristic compassion, erudition, and luminous prose. From the celebrated case history of Spalding Gray that appeared in The New Yorker four months before his death to reflections on mental asylums; from piercing accounts of Schizophrenia to a reminiscence of Robin Williams; from the riveting tale of a medical colleague falling victim to Alzheimer's to the cinematography of Michael Powell, this volume celebrates and reflects the wondrous curiosity of Oliver Sacks.