Living at the End of Life: A Hospice Nurse Addresses the Most Common Questions


Karen Whitley Bell - 2010
    I’m afraid…As death approaches, both patient and family must cope with grief, pain, and seemingly unanswerable questions. It’s a time of challenge, of concerns. But, as hospice nurse Karen Whitley Bell reminds us, it also offers an opportunity to explore and rediscover the fuller, richer meaning of life.Drawing on her years of experience, Bell has created a comprehensive, insightful guide to every aspect of hospice care and the final stages of life. She discusses the physical, emotional, and spiritual journey a dying person goes through; care-giving during this difficult period; closure, and loss and the lessons it teaches us. In addition to her warm, yet knowledgeable voice, readers get firsthand accounts of experiences in hospice care, making Living at the End of Life accessible, reassuring, and indispensable.

Home is Burning


Dan Marshall - 2015
    First diagnosed when he was only ten years old, she was the model of resilience throughout his childhood, fighting her disease with tenacity and a mouth foul enough to make a sailor blush. But just as she faces a relapse, her husband —a successful businessman and devoted father—is diagnosed with ALS. He is told that in a few months' time, he be unable to walk, eat, or breathe on his own. Dan, a recent college graduate living the good life in Los Angeles, has no choice but to return home to help. Reinstalled in his parents' basement (in one of the only non-Mormon homes in a Salt Lake City subdivision) Dan is reunited with his siblings. His older sister Tiffany is resentful, having stayed closer to home to bear the brunt of their mother's illness. Younger brother Greg comes to lend a hand, giving up a journalism career and evenings cruising Chicago gay bars. Younger sister Michelle is a sullen teenager experimenting with drinking and flirting with her 35-year-old soccer coach. And baby sister Chelsea—the oddest duck in a family of misfits—can only think about dance. Together they form Team Terminal, going to battle against their parents' illnesses and cracking plenty of jokes along the way. As Dan steps into his role as caregiver, wheelchair wrangler, and sibling referee, he watches pieces of his previous life slip away, and comes to realize that you don't get to choose when it's time to grow up.

Eat for Heat


Matt Stone - 2012
    The net sum of the food and beverages we consume can either concentrate or dilute our body fluids. 'Eat for Heat' discusses simple principles on how to make minor changes to your meals and drinking habits to keep your body in a better metabolic “zone” all day every day. It’s a tactic that can be applied to any dietary belief system, and can even yield tremendous health benefits to those eating just a regular Western diet. Everyone can benefit from the simple concept put forth in Eat for Heat.In terms of specific benefits from mastering this idea, you can expect to…• Eliminate frequent urination and waking up at night to urinate• Overcome frequent headaches, migraines, and seizures• Increase body heat and body temperature to 98.6 degrees F and higher• Improve or eliminate anxiety completely, stabilizing mood• Sleep deeper and longer, waking feeling more rested• Enhance immunity and increase the speed of tissue renewal• Eradicate heart palpitations• Moisten your skin and hair, especially dry skin around the hands and lower legs and feet• Eliminate dry mouth and excessive thirst• Lower LDL, total cholesterol, and triglycerides• Increase sex hormone production like progesterone and testosterone• Be able to eat whatever you want, when you want, without gaining fat• Strengthen bones and teethAnd more…

Table in the Darkness: A Healing Journey Through an Eating Disorder


Lee Wolfe Blum - 2013
    . . . When I heard the words my mind decoded it like this: You. Are. Fat. Fat was not good. No, fat was bad. I would not be fat. I stood in front of the full-length mirror in my dorm room and inspected the extra parts. These extra parts needed fixing my stomach, my thighs, and those cheeks that were round and puffy, like two big apples on the side of my face. I would fix this. Fixing was my forte. These were the thoughts that plagued Lee Blum during her teens and into her twenties.They drove her to an eating disorder and exercise addiction. Eventually, she found herself hospitalized with clinical depression. But that's not the end of the story: drawing strength from psychological, physiological and spiritual sources, she found her voice again. If you or someone you love has been at this dark table, you will find her story enlightening and encouraging.

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.

Pleased to Meet Me: Genes, Germs, and the Curious Forces That Make Us Who We Are


Bill Sullivan - 2019
    The foods we enjoy, the people we love, the emotions we feel, and the beliefs we hold can all be traced back to our DNA, germs, and environment. This witty, colloquial book is popular science at its best, describing in everyday language how genetics, epigenetics, microbiology, and psychology work together to influence our personality and actions. Mixing cutting-edge research and relatable humor, Pleased to Meet Me is filled with fascinating insights that shine a light on who we really are--and how we might become our best selves.

Surgery, The Ultimate Placebo: A Surgeon Cuts through the Evidence


Ian Harris - 2016
    In this book you will see how commonly performed operations can be found to be useless or even harmful when properly evaluated. That these claims come from an experienced, practicing orthopedic surgeon who performs many of these operations himself, makes the unsettling argument particularly compelling. Of course no surgeon is recommending invasive surgery in bad faith, but Ian Harris argues that the evidence for the success for many common operations, including knee arthroscopies, back fusion or cardiac stenting, become current accepted practice without full examination of the evidence.

A Mind of Your Own: The Truth About Depression and How Women Can Heal Their Bodies to Reclaim Their Lives


Kelly Brogan - 2016
    It is a symptom.Recent years have seen a shocking increase in antidepressant use the world over, with 1 in 4 women starting their day with medication. These drugs have steadily become the panacea for everything from grief, irritability, panic attacks, to insomnia, PMS, and stress.  But the truth is, what women really need can’t be found at a pharmacy.According to Dr. Kelly Brogan, antidepressants not only overpromise and underdeliver, but their use may permanently disable the body’s self-healing potential. We need a new paradigm: The best way to heal the mind is to heal the whole body.In this groundbreaking, science-based and holistic approach, Dr. Brogan shatters the mythology conventional medicine has built around the causes and treatment of depression. Based on her expert interpretation of published medical findings, combined with years of experience from her clinical practice, Dr. Brogan illuminates the true cause of depression: it is not simply a chemical imbalance, but a lifestyle crisis that demands a reset. It is a signal that the interconnected systems in the body are out of balance – from blood sugar, to gut health, to thyroid function– and inflammation is at the root.A Mind of Your Own offers an achievable, step-by-step 30-day action plan—including powerful dietary interventions, targeted nutrient support, detoxification, sleep, and stress reframing techniques—women can use to heal their bodies, alleviate inflammation, and feel like themselves again without a single prescription.Bold, brave, and revolutionary, A Mind of Your Own takes readers on a journey of self-empowerment for radical transformation that goes far beyond symptom relief.

Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital


Eric Manheimer - 2012
    Dr. Manheimer describes the plights of twelve very different patients--from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners at Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons.Manheimer was not only the medical director of the country's oldest public hospital for over 13 years, but he was also a patient. As the book unfolds, the narrator is diagnosed with cancer, and he is forced to wrestle with the end of his own life even as he struggles to save the lives of others.

Viva the Entrepreneur: Founding, Scaling, and Raising Venture Capital in Latin America


Brian Requarth
    He shows how to manage your own psychology and your operations, be it working with co-founders, building a culture, or managing a board of directors. Brian also reveals the secrets of scaling a business and best practices for raising venture capital in Latin America. You will develop an understanding of the most critical parts of an investor term sheet, and gain perspective into the inner workings of the venture capital game.

Flat: Reclaiming My Body from Breast Cancer


Catherine Guthrie - 2018
    However, after years writing about women’s health and breast cancer, Guthrie is thrust into the role of the patient after a devastating diagnosis at age thirty-eight. At least, she thinks, I know what I'm up against.She was wrong. In one horrifying moment after another, everything that could go wrong does—the surgeon gives her a double mastectomy but misses the cancerous lump, one of the most effective drug treatments fails, and a doctor's error may have unleashed millions of breast cancer cells into her body.Flat is Guthrie’s story of how two bouts of breast cancer shook her faith in her body, her relationship, and medicine. Along the way, she challenges the view that breasts are essential to femininity and paramount to a woman’s happiness. Ultimately, she traces an intimate portrayal of how cancer reshapes her relationship with Mary, her partner, revealing—in the midst of crisis—a love story.Filled with candor, vulnerability, and resilience, Guthrie upends the “pink ribbon” narrative and offers a unique perspective on womanhood, what it means to be “whole,” and the importance of women advocating for their desires. Flat is a story about how she found the strength to forge an unconventional path—one of listening to her body—that she’d been on all along.

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery


Barbara K. Lipska - 2018
    As the cancer progressed and was treated, the author experienced behavioral and cognitive symptoms connected to a range of mental disorders, including her professional specialty, schizophrenia. Lipska's family and associates were alarmed by the changes in her behavior, which she failed to acknowledge herself. Gradually, after a course of immunotherapy, Lipska returned to normal functioning, recalled her experience and, through her knowledge of neuroscience, identified the ways in which her brain changed during treatment. Lipska admits her condition was unusual; after recovery she was able to return to her research and resume her athletic training and compete in a triathalon. Most patients with similar brain cancers rarely survive to describe their ordeal. Lipska's memoir, coauthored with journalist McArdle, shows that strength and courage but also a encouraging support network are vital to recovery

Adventures in Human Being: A Grand Tour from the Cranium to the Calcaneum


Gavin Francis - 2015
    How many of us understand the way seizures affect the brain, how the heart is connected to wellbeing, or the why the foot carries the key to our humanity? In Adventures in Human Being, award-winning author Gavin Francis leads readers on a journey into the hidden pathways of the human body, offering a guide to its inner workings and a celebration of its marvels.Drawing on his experiences as a surgeon, ER specialist, and family physician, Francis blends stories from the clinic with episodes from medical history, philosophy, and literature to describe the body in sickness and in health, in living and in dying. At its heart, Adventures in Human Being is a meditation on what it means to be human. Poetic, eloquent, and profoundly perceptive, this book will transform the way you view your body.

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.

The Heart of Addiction: A New Approach to Understanding and Managing Alcoholism and Other Addictive Behaviors


Lance Dodes - 2002
    Lance Dodes has been successfully helping people master their addictions -- alcoholism, compulsive gambling, smoking, sexual addiction, and more with a radical approach. Dr. Dodes describes how all addictions have, at their heart, unrecognized emotional factors that explain:Why we feel the impulse Why we feel it when we do What alternatives (really) work in that critical momentIn this refreshing book filled with compelling case studies, Dr. Dodes debunks several such widely accepted myths as:Addictions are fundamentally a physical problem. People with addictions are different from other people. You have to hit bottom before you can get well. You are wasting your time if you ask "why" you have an addiction.