Book picks similar to
Life Support: Diary of an ICU Doctor on the Frontline of the Covid Crisis by Jim Down
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Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor
Max Pemberton - 2008
Trust Me, I'm a (Junior) Doctor In the vein of the best 'blog books' - the real life story of a hapless junior doctor, based on his columns written anonymously for the Telegraph Full description
Still Life: A Memoir
Jeff Sutherland - 2019
He visited a specialist and from that appointment, he writes, "deep personal loss for some unknown reason wrapped its tentacles around me and my family." Diagnosed with ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease), he lost his abilities to walk and speak within two years and, confined to a wheelchair, was forced to retire from his life's calling at age forty-three. Not long after, he was locked in his own inanimate body, unable to eat, drink, or breathe without assistance. His meals were delivered through a feeding tube, and a ventilator controlled his lungs through an opening in his throat. The only parts of his body he was able to move voluntarily were his eyes.Despite these extreme limitations, Sutherland made peace with his disease and, surrounded by his loving family, found happiness again, only to suffer another soul-shattering loss. His eldest son, Zachary, a lifeguard, drowned along with his girlfriend in a freak kayaking accident in the river behind the family home. "Despite everything I lost through ALS," he says, Zachary's death was worse. Yet again, through a long process of suffering and healing, Sutherland was able to accept his loss and find a renewed sense of purpose and meaning in his constricted life. His story, laboriously written on a computerized device that tracks his eye movements on a visual keyboard, is a testament to both the human will's ability to overcome unspeakable tragedy, and the power of familial love to heal incomprehensible pain. "When a negative change occurs," writes Sutherland, "we have to choose how we will face it. We can be paralyzed with fear or we can make the choice to integrate it into our lives, make peace with it, and eventually grow from it. With any change, good or bad, personal growth is the ideal outcome. It is my belief that this our soul's mission on earth."
My Broken Vagina: One Woman's Quest to Fix Her Sex Life, and Yours
Fran Bushe - 2021
Unsurprisingly, neither worked.After a visit to Sex Camp and many attempts to fix her 'broken' vagina, Fran decided to share her own hilarious, excruciating, and sometimes upsetting experiences. With the help of her 16 year old self's diary, expert advice, candid and enlightening interviews with others about sex, and some self-care exercises, Fran sets about trying to make herself, and other people, feel like they're not being gaslit by their own vaginas.
Our Country Nurse: Can East End Nurse Sarah find a new life caring for babies in the country?
Sarah Beeson - 2016
She's barely out of the car when she's called to assist the midwife with a bride who's gone into labour in the middle of her own wedding reception. And so her adventures begin...As a health visitor Nurse Sarah is as green as grass but she puts her best foot into wellies and braves the mad dogs, killer ganders and muddy tracks of the farming community. Despite set-backs young Sarah is determined to help the mums she meets, from struggling young mothers in unmodernised farmhouses, to doyennes of the county dinner party set who slave over stuffed olive hors-d'oeuvres.Village life in 1970s isn't always quite the Good Life Sarah's been expecting; her attempts at self-sufficiency and cider making lead to drunk badgers and spirited house parties - but will it be the clergyman, the vet or the young doctor that win Sarah's heart. During her first year in Kent, Nurse Sarah Hill get stuck in - reuniting families and helping mums in the midst of community full of ancient feuds, funny little ways and just a bit of magic.
Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health
Laurie Garrett - 2000
Garrett also exposes the ungoverned world of biological terrorism.
The Contender: Andrew Cuomo, a Biography
Michael Shnayerson - 2014
In many ways, his rise, fall, and rise again is an iconic story: a young American politician of vaunting ambition, aiming for nothing less than the presidency. Building on his father's political success, a first run for governor in 2002 led to a stinging defeat, and a painful, public divorce from Kerry Kennedy, scion of another political dynasty, Cuomo had to come back from seeming political death and reinvent himself. He did so, brilliantly, by becoming New York's attorney general, and compiling a record that focused on public corruption. In winning the governorship in 2010, he promised to clean up America's most corrupt legislature. He is blunt and combative, the antithesis of the glad-handing, blow-dried senator or governor who tries to please one and all. He's also proven he can make his legislature work, alternately charming and arm-twisting his colleagues with a talent for political strategy reminiscent of President Lyndon Johnson. Political pundits tend to agree that for Cuomo, a run for the White House is not a question of whether, but when.
Intensive Care: The Story of a Nurse
Echo Heron - 1987
Dedicated to healing and helping in the harshest environments, she spent ten years in emergency rooms and intensive care units. Her story is unique, penetrating, and unforgettable. Her story is real."Compelling reading."NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives: Tales of Life and Death from the ER
Pamela Grim - 2000
Pamela Grim has delivered babies, treated heart attacks, saved car accident victims, comforted the dying, and consoled the living who were left behind. She has worked all over the world, caring for victims of gang life in America's inner cities, victims of the war in Bosnia, poverty-stricken patients in Nigeria, and bank presidents in the United States. Relating these rich and varied experiences with compelling prose, Dr. Grim takes readers into the E.R. and lets them experience first-hand what it takes to make split-second, life-and-death decisions in the course of an average day. And with unflinching honesty, she conveys what it's like to be a caring physician with one of the most demanding, exhilarating, frustrating, and rewarding jobs in the world.
Election Notebook: The Inside Story Of The Battle Over Britain’s Future And My Personal Battle To Report It
Nick Robinson - 2015
This is Nick‘s behind-the-scenes account of his encounters with David Cameron, who many wrote off before the shock victory he called his 'sweetest'; Ed Miliband, who turned abuse & ridicule into respect before leading Labour to its worst defeat in a generation; Nick Clegg, who led his party into power and then to humiliation and near oblivion; Nigel Farage, who rose so fast and then fell at the final hurdle; Alex Salmond, whose public clash with Nick led to thousands protesting outside the BBC’s Scottish HQ, and Nicola Sturgeon, whose stunning success as SNP leader has put Scottish independence back on the map.The result is an extraordinary narrative, characterized by Nick Robinson’s trademark insight, analysis and backstage gossip, of an adrenaline-fuelled year which culminated in a captivating election that transformed Britain’s political landscape.
Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
Sam Quinones - 2015
Communities where heroin had never been seen before—from Charlotte, NC and Huntington, WVA, to Salt Lake City and Portland, OR—were overrun with it. Local police and residents were stunned. How could heroin, long considered a drug found only in the dense, urban environments along the East Coast, and trafficked into the United States by enormous Colombian drug cartels, be so incredibly ubiquitous in the American heartland? Who was bringing it here, and perhaps more importantly, why were so many townspeople suddenly eager for the comparatively cheap high it offered?With the same dramatic drive of El Narco and Methland, Sam Quinones weaves together two classic tales of American capitalism: The stories of young men in Mexico, independent of the drug cartels, in search of their own American Dream via the fast and enormous profits of trafficking cheap black-tar heroin to America’s rural and suburban addicts; and that of Purdue Pharma in Stamford, Connecticut, determined to corner the market on pain with its new and expensive miracle drug, Oxycontin; extremely addictive in its own right. Quinones illuminates just how these two stories fit together as cause and effect: hooked on costly Oxycontin, American addicts were lured to much cheaper black tar heroin and its powerful and dangerous long-lasting high. Embroiled alongside the suppliers and buyers are DEA agents, local, small-town sheriffs, and the US attorney from eastern Virginia whose case against Purdue Pharma and Oxycontin made him an enemy of the Bush-era Justice Department, ultimately stalling and destroying his career in public service.Dreamland is a scathing and incendiary account of drug culture and addiction spreading to every part of the American landscape.
First Aid for the USMLE Step 2 CK
Tao Le - 1999
Written by medical students and reviewed by top faculty, this unique book provides practical, tested advice for acing the USMLE Step 2 CK.
The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital
Alexandra Robbins - 2015
Lara, a superstar nurse who tries to battle her way back from a near-ruinous prescription-drug addiction. The outspoken but compassionate Juliette, a fierce advocate for her patients. And Sam, a first-year nurse, struggling to find her way in a gossipy mean-girl climate she likens to “high school, except for the dying people.”The result is a riveting page-turner, insightful and thought-provoking, that will leave readers feeling smarter about their healthcare and undeniably appreciative of the incredible nurses who provide it.
Black Man in a White Coat: A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine
Damon Tweedy - 2015
Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites."Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. As Tweedy transforms from student to practicing physician, he discovers how often race influences his encounters with patients. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. These issues take on greater meaning when Tweedy is himself diagnosed with a chronic disease far more common among black people. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.
Trauma: My Life as an Emergency Surgeon
James Cole - 2011
Cole's harrowing account of his life spent in the ER and on the battlegrounds, fighting to save lives. In addition to his gripping stories of treating victims of gunshot wounds, stabbings, attempted suicides, flesh-eating bacteria, car crashes, industrial accidents, murder, and war, the book also covers the years during Cole's residency training when he was faced with 120-hour work weeks, excessive sleep deprivation, and the pressures of having to manage people dying of traumatic injury, often with little support.Unlike the authors of other medical memoirs, Cole trained to be a surgeon in the military and served as a physician member of a Marine Corps reconnaissance unit, United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), and on a Navy Reserve SEAL team. From treating war casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq to his experiences as a civilian trauma surgeon treating alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals, and the mentally deranged, TRAUMA is an intense look at one man's commitment to his country and to those most desperately in need of aid.
Tales from the Tail End: Adventures of a Vet in Practice
Emma Milne - 2012