Medical Biography

Senior ophthalmology student, Dr Hugh Ringland Taylor, was in the field with the National Trachoma and Eye Health Program with Professor Fred Hollows in the 1970s. Professor Hugh Ringland Taylor AC decided to change the course of his life in his late fifties, in 2006.

Patti M. Hall’s life is pitched into an abyss of uncertainty when a golf ball-sized tumour is discovered in her teenage son’s head and he is diagnosed with gigantism, a disease of both legend and stigma. After scrambling to access a handful of medical experts in the field, Patti learns that her son could grow uncontrollably, his mobility could be permanently limited, and his life could be cut short without timely and aggressive treatment. Patti’s attention shifts fully to her son, away from her relationships as well as her own career and health.

Christine Bryden was a top civil servant and single mother of three children when she was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 46. Since then she has gone on to challenge almost every stereotype of people with dementia. This is a vivid account of the author's experiences of living with dementia, exploring the effects of memory problems, loss of independence, difficulties in communication and the exhaustion of coping with simple tasks. She describes how, with the support of her husband, Paul, she continues to lead an active life and explains how professionals and carers can help.

Elizabeth Ford went through medical school unsure of where she belonged. It wasn't until she did her psychiatry rotation that she found her calling - to care for one of the most vulnerable populations of mentally ill people, the inmates of New York City's jails, including Rikers Island, who are so sick that they are sent to the Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward for care.

“Strokes are the third-leading cause of death in America, and for the ‘lucky’ stroke victims who don’t die, about half will spend the rest of their lives trying to recover.” Roughly 700,000 American suffer a stroke each year and around 140,000 of them are fatal. Different Strokes is an in-depth look at what surviving, or not surviving, a stroke can mean.

In This Common Secret, Dr. Susan Wicklund chronicles her emotional and dramatic twenty-year career on the front lines of the abortion war. Growing up in working class, rural Wisconsin, Wicklund had her own painful abortion at a young age. It was not until she became a doctor that she realized how many women shared her ordeal of an unwanted pregnancy - and how hidden this common experience remains.

The personally harrowing and medically enthralling story of a family's struggle to save a child from a deadly immune deficiency. A journey through the deepest valleys and highest peaks of parenting. When a two-month-old baby falls ill, his apparently ordinary symptoms turn out to signal a rare...

A book that challenges our notions of family honour and morality Sometime, somewhere, the conspiracy of silence around Child Sexual Abuse (CSA) in Indian homes had to be shattered. This path-breaking book'the first of its kind in the country and subcontinent'attempts to give that...

Biographical account which documents Doctor KP Buteyko's theories, teachings and thoughts, also gives a detailed history of the Buteyko breathing method as taught by Dr Buteyko and his colleagues and outlines his belief that the method could be used to treat 150 Diseases of Deep Breathing.

The book is a compilation of short personal medical stories compiled from my 45 years in the practice of Emergency Medicine and Anesthesiology. Each short story is based on actual events and meant to entertain as well as provide some insight into a career in ER Medicine and the practice of Anesthesia. The style of writing is meant for people with a non medical as well as a medical background. The stories vary from 'you can't make this up' humorous side of practicing medicine to very serious medical care scenarios.

In ADHD and Me, he tells about the next 12 years as he learns to live with both the good and bad sides of life with ADHD. Blake's memoir offers, for the first time, a young person's account of what it's like to live and grow up with this common condition. Join Blake as he foils bullies, confronts unfair teachers, struggles with distraction and disorganization on exams, and goes sailing out-of-bounds and ends up with a boatload of spiders.

There was a time when women’s health was repressed and breast cancer wasn’t discussed, but Shirley Temple Black, Rose Kushner, and Evelyn Lauder refused to be silenced. Their courage ignited a movement that changed the way society addresses breast cancer. When these “radical sisters” were diagnosed, they faced a medical world of myths, outdated protocols, and a shocking lack of research. Breast cancer awareness was absent, and treatment options were scarce. Yet, Shirley, Rose, and Evelyn became trailblazing advocates for breast cancer research, early detection, and women’s health.

On an island off the coast of Massachusetts, six miles across the cobalt blue Waters of the Nantucket Sound, there is a place where hope flourishes. The island is Martha’s Vineyard. The place is Camp Jabberwocky, a sleepover summer camp for people with a variety of disabilities.

Dr. Loren A. Olson has frequently been asked two questions: How could you not know that you were gay until the age of forty? Wasn't your marriage just a sham to protect yourself at your wife's expense? In Finally Out, Dr. Olson vigorously answers both questions by telling the inspiring story of his evolving sexuality, into which he intelligently weaves psychological concepts and gay history.

Christine Montross was a nervous first-year medical student, standing outside the anatomy lab on her first day of class, preparing herself for what was to come. Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses in body bags is shocking, no matter how long you've prepared yourself, but a strange thing happened when Montross met her cadaver.

In the novel Little Women, Mr. March goes off to war. But in real life, it was Jo March (Louisa May Alcott herself, an avowed abolitionist) who traveled to Washington to nurse Northern soldiers. This is Alcott’s memoir but she chose to use the pseudonym “Tribulation Periwinkle” to tell her story. Despite the subject matter, her account is full of amusing anecdotes as she makes her way alone from Concord, Massachusetts to DC, trying to finagle a free ticket and convinced she will drown during the journey.

"When Hard Lilies Cry" describes Manal's 26 years journey battling two cancers and preventing two more; she battled breast and Thyroid cancers while raising her children and coping with harsh chemo and radiotherapy, she accepted the alteration of her figure after mastectomy for the sake of her children.

In Return to Joy, Dr. Keith Kahle offers a raw, deeply personal exploration of the long-term effects of “father-wounding”—a form of trauma rooted in unmet emotional needs, silence, or absence from a paternal figure. Drawing from his own life experiences, Kahle examines how these wounds manifest throughout adulthood in relationships, physical and emotional health, and personal identity. With a blend of memoir, medical insight, and compassionate storytelling, he shows how seemingly minor childhood messages can create lifelong patterns of shame, reactivity, and self-doubt.

A Different Face of War is a riveting account of one American officer in the Medical Service Corps during the early years of the Vietnam War. Assigned as the senior medical advisor to the Army of the Republic of Vietnam in I Corps, near the DMZ, James G. Van Straten traveled extensively and interacted with military officers and non-commissioned officers, peasant-class farmers, Buddhist bonzes, shopkeepers, nurses, the mentally ill, and even political operatives. He sent his wife daily letters from July 1966 through June 1967, describing in impressive detail his experiences, and those letters became the primary source for his memoir.

I really need people to understand the reason behind me writing this book about my grandmother Henrietta Lacks. For those who have never heard of her, she is the first human whose cell line was able to grow in culture; her cells were unlike any other cells. While others cells would die, Henrietta Lacks cells doubled every 20 to 24 hours. She has contributed to the medical field in ways that no other cell line has done. HeLa cells has helped with the polio vaccine, gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, sensitivity to tape, dental, and even used in the cosmetic field.