Medical Memoirs

Andrew Schulman, a fifty-seven-year-old professional guitarist, had a close brush with death on the night of July 16, 2009. Against the odds—and with the help of music—he survived: a medical miracle. Once fully recovered, Andrew resolved to use his musical gifts to help critically ill patients at Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s intensive care unit. In Waking the Spirit, you’ll learn the astonishing stories of the people he has met along the way—both patients and doctors—and see the incredible role music can play in a modern hospital setting.

Written by a three times cancer survivor, this book is a must-listen for anyone facing and fighting cancer as well as for their caregivers. Called from a scientific background into Christian ministry, Philip has the ideal background to furnish valuable factual advice and spiritual counsel to his listeners. He shares candidly about how God helped him overcome malignant melanoma and prostate cancer and about his present struggles against multiple myeloma.

Frank Rivera's fight and advocacy has gone through ups and downs, but it will never beat him. Each chapter is its own little story and time in which he is fighting and advocating for people with sarcoidosis. We have two options in life when fighting any rare disease: Either you can roll up into a ball, or you can fight.

G. Wayne Miller has dramatically and meticulously reconstructed an amazing true story: how a group of renegade Minnesota surgeons, led by Dr. Walt Lillehei, made medical history by becoming the first doctors to operate deep inside the human heart.

Vincent Di Maio, MD, son of a famous New York City medical examiner, is one of the lions of forensic science. In this clear, gritty, and enthralling narrative, Di Maio himself guides us into the inner sanctum, through the cases that have made him famous, from the exhumation of assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and the racially charged shooting of Florida teen Trayvon Martin to the unmasking of a serial baby killer and the mysterious death of troubled genius Vincent van Gogh.

How does one begin to treat such cases, to counsel people whose lives may be changed forever? How does one train the next generation of clinicians to deal with the moral and medical aspects of brain disease? Dr. Ropper and his colleague answer these questions by taking the listener into a rarified world where lives and minds hang in the balance.

This book explores Alzheimer’s disease through the intertwined perspectives of a patient and her devoted caregiver, offering a deeply personal look at the emotional, physical, and mental challenges they face. From the first signs of memory loss to the final days of care, listeners are taken on a raw and honest journey through the daily struggles, heartbreaks, and small victories of providing care for a loved one with Alzheimer’s.

An upcoming book to be published by Penguin Random House...

When Amy B. Scher was struck with undiagnosed late-stage, chronic Lyme disease, the best physicians in America labeled her condition incurable and potentially terminal. Deteriorating rapidly, she went on a search to save her own life - from the top experts in Los Angeles and the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis to a state-of-the-art hospital in Chicago. After exhausting all of her options in the US, she discovered a possible cure - but it was highly experimental, available only in India, and had as much of a probability of killing her as it did of curing her.

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.

Thaïs is almost two. Like most well-loved children, she is happy. She laughs as she runs on the beach. But her footprints in the sand, with toes turned out, tell a different story. Two Small Footprints in Wet Sand relates the overwhelming tragedy experienced by a family as a result of a genetic disorder.

"Wonderful... Physicans would do well to learn this most important lesson about caring for patients." —The New York Times Book Review Over the years that Victoria Sweet has been a physician, “healthcare” has replaced medicine, “providers” look at their laptops more than at their...

An estimated 50 million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer’s erase parts of one’s memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don’t simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging....

In Liberation of Being: Allowing Terminal Illness to Teach Us How to Live, Dr. Dylan Shanahan invites listeners into a journey of profound resilience and philosophical exploration. Diagnosed with ALS in the prime of his life, Dylan confronts the relentless progression of the disease with courage and introspection. Formerly a vibrant athlete and dedicated scholar, Dylan's life takes an unexpected turn as he adapts to a body that steadily declines.

A riveting insider perspective from Ireland's former state pathologist Marie Cassidy. "For over thirty years, bodies have been my business. The lucky ones have died peacefully in their own bed, surrounded by loved ones. But, life, or should I say death, is not always like that. This is your...

In order to bring its origin to light, Rebecca Skloot weaves together several narrative threads. One is primarily focused on Henrietta Lacks, the woman who, without her knowledge, became central to 20th century biomedical research. Another is the birth of modern biomedical research itself, and its roots in the American eugenics movement. Finally, there is the impact of this research, both of the Lacks Family and on society at large. Skloot divides the book into 3 parts: Life, Death, and Immortality.

Mother of Courage is the inspiring true story of a young woman who loses both arms in a boating accident, yet valiantly finishes dental school, marries, raises two boys, teaches at an historically Black medical college, and becomes a nationally known advocate for people with disabilities. With grace, humor, faith, and a large dose of determination, Margaret Chanin transforms her tragic physical loss into a triumph of the human spirit—and shares her light with everyone she meets.

Anyone who lives with an eating disorder fights their own thoughts, their own anxieties, their own self, every second of every minute of every day. For Lizzie this was her reality from the age of 14. However through professional help, the support of her loving family, and her Christian faith, she somehow found the hope and strength to overcome. Life Hurts tells Lizzie's story, reflecting on it from her perspective as a doctor. Her vision is to inspire and encourage other to see that, although eating disorders can be devastating, there is hope for all of us.

A spellbinding memoir of a mother’s fight to save her daughter from a mysterious brain illness. It began with a seizure on a Brooklyn sidewalk just as fourteen-year-old Niko was preparing to enter one of the country’s most competitive high schools. Her immune system had gone haywire and was...

Trauma surgeon Dr. Brian H. Williams has seen it all—gunshot wounds, stabbings, traumatic brain injuries—and ushers us into the trauma bay, where the wounds of a national emergency amass. As a Harvard-trained physician, he learned to keep his head down and his scalpel ready. As a Black man, he learned to swallow rage when patients told him to take out the trash. Just days after the tragic police shootings of two Black men, he tried to save the lives of officers shot in the deadliest incident for US law enforcement since 9/11.