Medical Biography

Army combat veteran and registered nurse Erin Olszewski's most deeply held values were put to the test when she arrived as a travel nurse at Elmhurst Hospital in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. After serving in Iraq, she was back on the front lines - and this time, she found, the situation was even worse. Rooms were filthy, nurses were lax with sanitation measures, and hospital-acquired cases of COVID-19 were spreading like wildfire.

Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world’s most isolated and unforgiving environments - Nome, Alaska. That’s what happen to Dr. Sims. His plans to become a pediatric surgeon were drastically changed when, on the eve of being drafted into the army to serve as a MASH surgeon in Vietnam, he was offered a commission in the US Public Health for assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was scheduled to act as chief of pediatrics at the Alaska Native Medical Center.

Author Leslie Lehr wants to talk about boobs. She’s gone from size AA to DDD and everything between, from puberty to motherhood, enhancement to cancer, and beyond. And she’s not alone - these are classic life stages for women today. At turns funny and heartbreaking, A Boob’s Life explores both the joys and hazards inherent to living in a woman’s body. Lehr deftly blends her personal narrative with national history, starting in the 1960s with the women’s liberation movement and moving to the current feminist dialogue and what it means to be a woman.

Join Colin Black on his journey from accidental medical student to HSE and NHS trainee and, finally, consultant paediatric anaesthetist at the largest children’s hospital in Ireland, where any given day could end in laughter or tears—and that’s just the staff. Razor-sharp and forthright, Gas Man is a disarming and frequently hilarious account of life in one of the most fascinating and thrilling professions at medicine’s frontline, where every day is a heady cocktail of severe pressure, poignancy and profound social awkwardness.

An award-winning science writer discovers she’s faceblind and investigates the neuroscience of sight, memory, and imagination—while solving some long-running mysteries about her own life. Science writer Sadie Dingfelder has always known that she’s a little quirky. But while she’s made...

Chad shares the highs, the lows, and everything in between during his career as a paramedic, as well as the personal highs and lows. His stories highlight the dance between being fine, and burning out, as well as how the system fails to serve those who have dedicated their lives and careers to serving others.

The search to find medicines is as old as disease, which is to say as old as the human race. Through serendipity - by chewing, brewing, and snorting - some Neolithic souls discovered opium, alcohol, snakeroot, juniper, frankincense, and other helpful substances. Ötzi the Iceman, the 5,000-year-old hunter frozen in the Italian Alps, was found to have whipworms in his intestines and Bronze Age medicine, a worm-killing birch fungus, knotted to his leggings.

This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman's perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Daphne Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction.

A Remembrance of Things Forgotten describes Steven's journey from being a high-powered lawyer, to going to Seminary, and then to being an interfaith hospital chaplain intern seeing cancer patients on two oncology units at a major New York Medical Center. The book describes his visits with patients and explores the heartbreak – and inspiration – of their suffering and how they opened his heart to the precious worth of their lives and to the very real presence of a divine love, realer than real, shining concretely in each room and in each patient's heart.

For six decades, Pittsburgh-based forensic scientist Cyril Wecht has been an outspoken authority when horrible things happen to everyday people--murders, childhood deaths, tragic accidents and police brutality. His expertise and testimony have been called upon in high-profile cases, including the deaths of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., Elvis Presley, JonBenet Ramsey, Laci Peterson and others.

Diagnosed with a late-stage cancer after years of bungled and inadequate medical attention...and then to discover the best-practice chemotherapy is not available in your province. A true story, The Cancer Olympics is a suspenseful and poignant treatment of an unthinkable situation, an account of advocacy and survival that explores our deepest values regarding democracy, medicine, and friendship.

In the fall of 1995, Dr. Saray Stancic was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. By 2003, she walked regularly with a cane, had given up virtually all unnecessary physical activity, and was on numerous medications, all with horrible side effects. After stumbling upon some studies that linked MS outcomes to diet and lifestyle, Dr. Stancic undertook a radically different approach to managing her illness.

Recalling remarkable cases - and people - from a career launched in the first days of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Paul Seward leads us in his memoir through suspenseful diagnoses and explorations of anatomy. Within the conditions of great stress and rapid decision-making that are routine in the ER, Dr. Seward tells us that medical staff must be more than technicians of the body: They must be restorers of the human.

Bent but Not Broken is an unflinchingly honest memoir about the onset of Peyronie’s disease, a painful and sexually limiting condition that is estimated to affect more than five percent of the worldwide adult male population. Don Cummings narrates humorously about the emotional and collateral damage brought on by a suddenly curved penis as he struggles to maintain his sense of sex and self.

A fascinating, darkly funny comeback story of learning to live with a broken mind after a near-fatal traumatic brain injury—from the acclaimed author of The Hike “Drew Magary has produced a remarkable account of his journey, one that is filled with terror, tenderness, beauty, and grace...

Em Medicina dos horrores, a historiadora Lindsey Fitzharris narra como era o chocante mundo da cirurgia do século XIX, que estava às vésperas de uma profunda transformação. A autora evoca os primeiros anfiteatros de operações—lugares abafados onde os procedimentos eram feitos diante de plateias lotadas—e cirurgiões pioneiros, cujo ofício era saudado não pela precisão, mas pela velocidade e pela força bruta, uma vez que não havia anestesia. Não à toa, os mais célebres cirurgiões da época eram capazes de amputar uma perna em menos de trinta segundos.

Oftentimes, psychic "gifts" don’t feel like a gift at all. In this thrilling memoir, Sarah K. Grace describes in vivid detail what it's like to be in the trenches of some of California's busiest 911 systems as both a paramedic and highly sensitive clairvoyant/empath.

Jasmine was diagnosed with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis at the age of 13 and spent four years confined to a wheelchair. She has over eight different autoimmune diagnoses, has undergone 36 surgeries to date, and still needs more. She's had her knees replaced twice in her lifetime and has tried countless treatments, from Western to Eastern medicine. Today, she is completely in remission from everything and thriving! Discover how she did it and how music saved her life.

After years of hearing that she was an inspiration to family and friends, Heather decided to strive to inspire a larger audience by writing. Citing a lifetime of personal experiences, she gives her listeners an inside look at her world of insane medical drama, PTSD, pain, grief, and loss. She shares that the only way she has learned to accept each situation she has had to endure was to allow herself time to grieve. She knows that the only way to find lasting peace in the midst of life's many storms may require going through the grief cycle over and over again.

On a family vacation in 2009, Dr. Renée Brown Harmon felt the first jolt of fear that something might be wrong. How could her husband, Harvey, a highly intelligent physician, marathon runner, and devoted father, be struggling to keep up with their guide’s simple instructions or unable to do simple math to calculate their daughter’s age? The heartbreaking truth was confirmed nine months later when he was diagnosed with younger-onset Alzheimer’s disease at age fifty.