Book picks similar to
The Lonely Patient: How We Experience Illness by Michael Stein
non-fiction
health
medicine
nonfiction
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.
The Promise of Sleep: A Pioneer in Sleep Medicine Explores the Vital Connection Between Health, Happiness, and a Good Night's Sleep
William C. Dement - 1999
And yet we are a sleep-sick society, ignorant of the facts of sleep--and the price of sleep deprivation. In this groundbreaking book, based on decades of study on the frontiers of sleep science, Dr. William Dement, founder and director of the Stanford University Sleep Research Center, explains what happens when we sleep, when we don't, and how we can reclaim the most powerful--and underrated--health miracle of all. Taking us on a fascinating tour of our sleeping body and mind, Dr. Dement reveals the price we have paid for ignoring sleep--an epidemic of heart disease, 33 percent of traffic-fatigue-related accidents, and immeasurable mental and psychological disadvantages. And he offers a hands-on prescription for vibrant good health and longevity, including...self-tests to determine how much sleep you really need...the role of prescription and over-the-counter sleeping aids...the latest research on how sleep affects the immune system...how to combat insomnia, snoring, and jet lag...plus information on sleep disorder clinics nationwide, Web sites, and more.Taking readers on a fascinating tour of our sleeping body and mind, Dr. William C. Dement reveals the price paid for ignoring sleep--an epidemic of heart disease, traffic-fatigue-related accidents (responsible for a full third of all traffic accidents), and immeasurable mental and psychological disadvantages. Offering a hands-on prescription for vibrant good health and longevity, THE PROMISE OF SLEEP includes self-tests to determine how much sleep you really need, full information on the role of prescription and over-the-counter sleeping aids, the latest research on how sleep affects the immune system, helpful methods for combating insomnia, snoring, and jet lag, plus information on sleep disorder clinics nationwide, sleep disorder Web sites, and more. -->
Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure
Eli Clare - 2017
It saves lives, manipulates lives, and prioritizes some lives over others. It provides comfort, makes profits, justifies violence, and promises resolution to body-mind loss. Clare grapples with this knot of contradictions, maintaining that neither an anti-cure politics nor a pro-cure worldview can account for the messy, complex relationships we have with our body-minds.The stories he tells range widely, stretching from disability stereotypes to weight loss surgery, gender transition to skin lightening creams. At each turn, Clare weaves race, disability, sexuality, class, and gender together, insisting on the nonnegotiable value of body-mind difference. Into this mix, he adds environmental politics, thinking about ecosystem loss and restoration as a way of delving more deeply into cure.Ultimately Brilliant Imperfection reveals cure to be an ideology grounded in the twin notions of normal and natural, slippery and powerful, necessary and damaging all at the same time.
Almost Anorexic: Is My (or My Loved One's) Relationship with Food a Problem?
Jennifer J. Thomas - 2013
Some stand at the mirror wondering how they can face the day when they look so fat. Others binge, purge, or exercise compulsively. Many skip meals, go on diet after diet, or cut out entire food groups. Still, they are never thin enough.While 1 in 200 adults have experienced full-blown anorexia, at least 1 in 20 (1 in 10 teen girls!) have exhibited some key symptoms. Many suffer from the effects but never address the issue because they don’t fully meet the diagnostic criteria. If this is the case for you, then you may be “almost anorexic.” Drawing on case studies and the latest research, Almost Anorexic combines a psychologist’s clinical experience with a patient’s personal recovery story to help readers understand and overcome almost anorexia.Determine if your (or your loved one’s) relationship with food is a problemGain insight on how to intervene with a loved oneDiscover scientifically proven strategies to change unhealthy eating patternsLearn when and how to get professional help when it’s needed
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.
How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies
Therese A. Rando - 1989
But whether the death is sudden or anticipated, few of us are prepared for it or for the grief it brings. There is no right or wrong way to grieve. Each person's response to loss will be different. Now, in this compassionate, comprehensive guide, Therese A. Rando, Ph.D., bereavement specialist and author of Loss And Anticipatory Grief, leads you gently through the painful but necessary process of grieving. Whether the death was sudden or expected, from an accident, illness, suicide, homicide, or natural cause, Dr. Rando will help you learn to:Understand and resolve your grief.Talk to children about death.Resolve unfinished business.Take care of yourself.Accept the help and support of others.Get through holidays and other difficult times of the year.Plan funerals and personal bereavement rituals.How To Go On Living When Someone You Love Dies also includes a comprehensive resource listing and a chapter on finding professional help and support groups.There is no way around the pain of loss, but there is a way through it. Dr. Rando offers the solace, comfort, and guidance to help you accept your loss and move into your new life without forgetting your treasured past.
Bipolar Disorder Demystified: Mastering the Tightrope of Manic Depression
Lana R. Castle - 2003
In Bipolar Disorder Demystified, author Lana Castle, who has lived the better part of her life with this illness, has turned her personal experience into an eloquent and useful guide to all those who travel down the same path. In clear and honest language, Castle helps readers understand the true nature of bipolar disorder, the factors that complicate its diagnosis, and strategies for coping with the illness. Bipolar Disorder Demystified makes great strides in dispelling the mystery surrounding this illness, helping readers decide if it's time to seek treatment, and providing those with any form of mood disorder the information they need to better manage their lives.
You're Not Crazy And You're Not Alone
Stacey Robbins - 2013
Stacey explores the common areas that women with Hashi's struggle: like perfectionism and self-rejection -- and common past experiences -- like abuse or injury. Stacey inspires women to look at their lives, and Hashimoto's differently, and to use this diagnosis as an opportunity for inner healing, greater happiness, and loving themselves.
Caring for the Dying: The Doula Approach to a Meaningful Death
Henry Fersko-Weiss - 2017
It explores how the dying and their families can bring deep meaning and great comfort to the care given at the end of a life. Created by Henry Fersko-Weiss, the end-of-life doula model is adapted from the work of birth doulas and helps the dying to find meaning in their life, express that meaning in powerful and beautiful legacies, and plan for the final days. The approach calls for around-the-clock vigil care, so the dying person and their family have the emotional and spiritual support they need along with guidance on signs and symptoms of dying. It also covers the work of reprocessing a death with the family afterward and the early work of grieving.Emphasis is placed on the space around the dying person and encourages the use of touch, guided imagery, and ritual during the dying process. Throughout the book Fersko-Weiss tells amazing and encouraging stories of the people he has cared for, as well as stories that come from doulas he has trained and worked with over the years.What is unique about this book is the well-conceived and thorough approach it describes to working skillfully with the dying. The guidance provided can help a dying person, their family, and caregivers to transform the dying experience from one of fear and despair into one that is uplifting and even life affirming. You will see death in a new light and gain a different perspective on how to help the dying. It may even change the way you live your life right now.
Hypochondria Can Kill: A Disease for Every Occasion, an Illness for Every Symptom
John Naish - 2004
But don’t let it make you fret too much—research shows that worrying about your health quadruples your chances of an early death.
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha - 2018
Powerful and passionate, Care Work is a crucial and necessary call to arms.
Organizing Solutions for People With Attention Deficit Disorder: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized
Susan C. Pinsky - 2006
Four out of every five adults do not even know they are ADD, and while it is often difficult to differentiate adults with true ADD from adults who are merely forgetful and disorganized, Organizing Solutions for People with ADD outlines new organizing strategies that will be of value to anyone who wants to improve their organizational, or lack of, skills in their life. The chapters consist of practical organizing solutions for ADD at Work; prioritizing, time management, and organizing documents, ADD at Home; paying bills on time, de-cluttering your house, scheduling and keeping appointments, ADD with Kids; driving them to various activities, grocery shopping and meals, laundry, babysitters, organizing drawers and closets, and ADD and You; organizing time for your social life, gym, and various other hobbies and activities. Color photographs that capture the short attention span of the reader are featured throughout, as well as sidebars and testimonials from adults with ADD, providing numerous organizational tips, such as, the importance of dividing time into minutes or moments, task completion, how to avoid procrastination, asking for help, and how not to be a packrat.
Healing Children: A Surgeon's Stories from the Frontiers of Pediatric Medicine
Kurt Newman - 2017
As the current CEO of Children's National in Washington, D.C., the author presents an argument to place children's medical requirements and their need to thrive well into adulthood at the forefront of American medicine, and he admits that 'these kids have been my real teachers
Concussion
Jeanne Marie Laskas - 2015
Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who made one of the most significant medical discoveries of the twenty-first century, a discovery that challenges the existence of America’s favorite sport and puts Omalu in the crosshairs of football’s most powerful corporation: the NFL. Jeanne Marie Laskas first met the young forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu in 2009, while reporting a story for GQ that would go on to inspire the movie Concussion. Omalu told her about a day in September 2002, when, in a dingy morgue in downtown Pittsburgh, he picked up a scalpel and made a discovery that would rattle America in ways he’d never intended. Omalu was new to America, chasing the dream, a deeply spiritual man escaping the wounds of civil war in Nigeria. The body on the slab in front of him belonged to a fifty-year-old named Mike Webster, aka “Iron Mike,” a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the greatest ever to play the game. After retiring in 1990, Webster had suffered a dizzyingly steep decline. Toward the end of his life, he was living out of his van, tasering himself to relieve his chronic pain, and fixing his rotting teeth with Super Glue. How did this happen?, Omalu asked himself. How did a young man like Mike Webster end up like this? The search for answers would change Omalu’s life forever and put him in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful corporations in America: the National Football League. What Omalu discovered in Webster’s brain—proof that Iron Mike’s mental deterioration was no accident but a disease caused by blows to the head that could affect everyone playing the game—was the one truth the NFL wanted to ignore. Taut, gripping, and gorgeously told, Concussion is the stirring story of one unlikely man’s decision to stand up to a multibillion-dollar colossus, and to tell the world the truth. Advance praise for Concussion “A gripping medical mystery and a dazzling portrait of the young scientist no one wanted to listen to . . . a fabulous, essential read.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks“The story of Dr. Bennet Omalu’s battle against the NFL is classic David and Goliath stuff, and Jeanne Marie Laskas—one of my favorite writers on earth—makes it as exciting as any great courtroom or gridiron drama. A riveting, powerful human tale—and a master class on how to tell a story.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit “Bennet Omalu forced football to reckon with head trauma. The NFL doesn’t want you to hear his story, but Jeanne Marie Laskas makes it unforgettable. This book is gripping, eye-opening, and full of heart.”—Emily Bazelon, author of Sticks and Stones
Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, A Chorus of Hope
Richard Merrill Cohen - 2008
In this intimate portrait, acclaimed journalist Richard M. Cohen probes lives of sickness as these individuals struggle to cope.In 2003 Cohen published Blindsided, a bestselling memoir of illness. The outpouring of support revealed to him that not only does the public want to hear from people who overcome the challenges of illness, but that in the isolated world of illness, there are people who want their voices to be heard. Strong at the Broken Places was born of the desire of many to share their stories in the hope that the sick and those who love them will see that they are not alone.Cohen spent three years chronicling the lives of five diverse "citizens of sickness": Denise, who suffers from ALS; Buzz, whose Christian faith helps him deal with his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma; Sarah, a determined young woman with Crohn's disease; Ben, a college student with muscular dystrophy; Larry, whose bipolar disorder is hidden within. The five are different in age and gender, race and economic status, but they are determined to live life on their own terms. Intimately involved with these patients' lives, Cohen formed intense relationships with each, talked to their families and friends, and shared joy, even in heart-breaking setbacks.Though each individual's illness wreaks havoc in a different way, Cohen shows how their experiences are strikingly similar and offer lessons for us all—on self-determination, on courage in the face of adversity and public ignorance, on keeping hope alive, and on finding strength and peace under the most difficult of circumstances.We are strong at the broken places, stronger than we think. In sharing these inspirational and revealing stories, Richard M. Cohen and his fellow warriors against illness offer a chorus of hope.