Medical Biography

Leisa Marie Carzon, Ph.D., chronicles the extraordinary life of Sister Deirdre "Dede" Byrne, a professed religious sister, renowned surgeon, and retired U.S. Army colonel. The narrative details her journey in discerning and living her vocational calling, including providing free medical care to the poor, delivering a heroic national keynote address, and proposing Christ to everyone she meets with fearless abandon and determined love.

How can we prepare for an event that is literally beyond anything humanity has ever faced? Making Contact presents multiple perspectives on what no longer can be denied: UFOs and their occupants are visiting our world. The book answers questions which remain in the wake of the recent...

Unlocking My Brain: Through the Labyrinth of Acquired Brain Injury brings to life Christine's personal experience of brain injury - from losing her vision and being unable to walk, talk or write, Christine regained her life, her thoughts and her career. In 1991, Christine was involved in a horrific car accident and suffered extensive injuries including Acquired Brain Injury (ABI). Unlocking My Brain shows the incredible plasticity of the human brain as well as the plasticity of the human spirit.

San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.

In “Lung Cancer Free” Dr. Lori Friesen and Keith Zafren share their journey from the shock of her husband’s initial diagnosis, through surgery and chemo, to the point where he was dying, being sustained on supplemental oxygen just to keep breathing, to where they are today: Keith is alive, breathing easily and freely with beautiful, healthy lungs.

Tom LeNoble’s life has been anything but ordinary, rising from the “Shack” with no hot water to the heights of Silicon Valley, and helping build some of the world’s most influential companies. He’s been a crowd-favorite performer, a bold leader, and a survivor of two life-threatening illnesses after being told three times he had six months to live. He’s navigated the AIDS epidemic’s heartbreak, personal loss, and the high-stakes world of Facebook, Walmart.com, Palm (HP), and MCI (Verizon), guiding startups and leaders through change.

In 2004, doctors discovered that Carmen Rice had a stage 4 glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor, one of the deadliest of all cancers—the same cancer which killed John McCain, Edward Kennedy, and Beau Biden. After being diagnosed with a glioblastoma tumor, 29-year-old Brittany Maynard made headline news when she moved to Oregon to die with dignity. Carmen's doctor gave her six months to live, but with her faith in God and tenacious spirit, Carmen just kept beating the odds. They Call Me "The Miracle" is her story.

On October 13, 1972, a Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying members of the "Old Christians" rugby team - and many of their friends and family members - crashed into the Andes Mountains. I Had to Survive offers a gripping and heartrending recollection of the harrowing, brink-of-death experience that propelled survivor Roberto Canessa to become one of the world's leading pediatric cardiologists.

From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Looming Tower, and the pandemic novel The End of October: an unprecedented, momentous account of Covid-19—its origins, its wide-ranging repercussions, and the ongoing global fight to contain it "A book of panoramic breadth ... managing to...

In this highly personal account, Dr Gibbs documents the effect his diagnosis has had on his life and explains his advocacy for improving early recognition of Alzheimer’s. Weaving clinical knowledge from decades caring for dementia patients with his personal experience of the disease, this is an optimistic tale of one man’s journey with early-stage Alzheimer’s disease.

El Dr. César Velasco Téllez es un exitoso Psiquiatra, Terapeuta Sexual y de Pareja mexicano, con más de 30 años de experiencia en la atención de pacientes con trastornos de salud mental, disfunciones sexual y problemas de pareja.

After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida's newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he'd been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell's rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile "bubble" in the remote Arizona desert.

In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the...

The life of a veterinarian is challenging: keeping up with advances in medical care, making difficult decisions about people's beloved companions, and, in Dr. Doug Mader's case, navigating the social unrest in Los Angeles in the early 1990s. The Vet at Noah's Ark follows Dr. Mader and his staff over the course of a year at Noah's Ark Veterinary Hospital, an inner-city LA area veterinary hospital where Dr. Mader treats not only dogs and cats, but also emus, skunks, snakes, foxes, monkeys, and a host of other exotic animals

Following up her international best seller The Zookeeper's Wife, Diane Ackerman tells the breathtaking story of the stroke that deprived her husband, Paul West - a distinguished novelist and poet - of every scrap of language beyond the syllable "mem". In her characteristically glorious prose, Ackerman weaves together the latest science on stroke and the brain’s ability to store and process language, with her intensely personal journey as caregiver in helping Paul to an extraordinary recovery.

Unexpectedly denied a visa to remain in the United States, Qanta Ahmed, a young British Muslim doctor, becomes an outcast in motion. On a whim, she accepts an exciting position in Saudi Arabia. This is not just a new job; this is a chance at adventure in an exotic land she thinks she understands, a place she hopes she will belong. What she discovers is vastly different. The Kingdom is a world apart, a land of unparalleled contrast. She finds rejection and scorn in the places she believed would most embrace her.

Lauren Marks was 27 when an aneurysm ruptured in her brain and left her fighting for her life. She woke up in a hospital soon after with serious deficiencies to her reading, speaking, and writing abilities, and an unfamiliar diagnosis: aphasia. This would be shocking news for anyone, but Lauren was a voracious reader, an actress, director, dramaturg, and pursuing her PhD. At any other period of her life, this diagnosis would have been a devastating blow. But she woke up...different.

We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet - a few innovations notwithstanding - a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was 50 years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must.

In his acclaimed first memoir, Hot Lights, Cold Steel, Collins wrote passionately about his four-year surgical residency at the prestigious Mayo Clinic. Blue Collar, Blue Scrubs turns back the clock, taking listeners from his days as a construction worker to his entry into medical school, expertly infusing his journey to become a doctor with humanity, compassion, and humor.

A 23-year veteran of emergency medical services, paramedic Matthew Sias took a detour in his career to pursue the death-care business and found a complementarity between two seemingly divergent careers. Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Life Saving Mortician is the record of some of the more memorable calls he has responded to through the years.