Medical Memoirs

From the man who first discovered the effective treatment for COVID-19 and who found himself facing vilification instead of congratulation, now comes the complete story of Dr. Vladimir “Zev” Zelenko’s rise from a modest family physician to an internationally recognized champion for medical freedom.

Welcome to Bryson City, a small town tucked away in a fold of North Carolina's Smoky Mountains. The scenery is breathtaking, the home cooking can't be beat, the Maroon Devils football team is the pride of the town, and you won't find better steelhead fishing anywhere. But the best part is the people you're about to meet in Bryson City Seasons. In this joyous sequel to his bestselling Bryson City Tales, Dr. Walt Larimore whisks you along on a journey through the seasons of a Bryson City year.

Dr. Liz O'Riordan is a breast cancer surgeon who has battled against social, physical and mental challenges to practice at the top of her field. Under the Knife charts Liz's incredible highs: performing like a couture dressmaker as she molded and reshaped women's breasts, while saving their lives; to the heart-breaking lows of telling ten women a day that they had cancer. But this memoir is more than just an eye-opening look at the realities of training to be a female surgeon in a man's world

A Silent Spring for the human body, this wide-ranging, genre-crossing literary mystery interweaves the author’s quest to understand the source of her own condition with her telling of the story of the chronically ill 19th-century diarist Alice James—ultimately uncovering the many hidden health hazards of life in America.

Sara Schley is the founder of a consulting business, and she has worked with hundreds of renowned companies worldwide. She's a proud mother, grandmother, community leader, and has been married for 26 years. She also has a bipolar II brain. Fearing the stigma, she kept this secret for decades. Until now. In her acclaimed memoir BrainStorm: From Broken to Blessed on the Bipolar Spectrum, Sara tells her life-changing story to help end the bipolar stigma, optimize brain health, and save lives. Listen to this book to transform your life or that of someone you love.

Families are riddled with untold secrets. But Stephen Hinshaw never imagined that a profound secret was kept under lock and key for 18 years within his family - that his father's mysterious absences, for months at a time, resulted from serious mental illness and involuntary hospitalizations. From the moment his father revealed the truth, during Hinshaw's first spring break from college, he knew his life would change forever.

Catherine Laborde, qui a des années durant présenté la météo sur TF1, se dévoile avec ce livre vérité, tout en pudeur, émotion, humour aussi, qui parlera à tous. Dans ce livre vérité sur la maladie de Parkinson dont Catherine Laborde est victime, elle raconte tout en pudeur, émotion, humour aussi, ce mal qui touche plusieurs milliers de personnes, malades et aidants inclus. "Après avoir réfléchi à mon quotidien, j'établis ainsi la liste non exhaustive des symptômes de la maladie de Parkinson qui me touchent."

At the age of 23 and fresh out of college, Julia fell head over heels for Randy, a charming coworker who swooped in with flowers, romantic dates, and conversations about their beautiful future together. As far as Julia was concerned, there was no looking back. Unfortunately, along with Randy’s affectionate behaviors came his highly dramatic, violent episodes. Having come from a similar home life, however, Julia didn’t blink an eye. It wasn’t until a grand finale abandonment that she recognized even her love wouldn’t be able to fix his issues.

Issa Ibrahim's memoir details in searing prose his development of severe mental illness leading to a horrific family tragedy, his acquittal by reason of insanity, and his subsequent commission to a mental hospital for nearly 20 years. Written with great verve and immediacy, The Hospital Always Wins paints a detailed picture of a broken mental-health system but also reveals the power of art, when nurtured in a benign environment, to provide a resource for recovery.

In July 1952, Dr. Walter Freeman arrived at the gates of a West Virginia asylum. In his medical bag he carried two metal picks and a surgical hammer. He had invented a “cheap, easy” ten-minute lobotomy. The press described it as a miracle cure, a new frontier in psychosurgery. That summer, in just twelve days, Freeman lobotomized 228 men, women, and children in West Virginia’s public mental hospitals. His blitzkrieg of brain surgery became known as “Operation Ice Pick,” named after the tools he wielded.

While in her early-30s, Anna Byrne was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. Over the next seven years, she endured four relapses, two stem cell transplants, and spent over 2,000 hours in Canadian hospitals. In 2014, she was given two years to live. Despite the odds, Anna left treatment cancer-free. She became a hospice volunteer and met Eleanor, a woman in her 70s whose death was imminent, and the two formed an unlikely friendship. Part memoir, medical guide, and spiritual text, Seven Year Summer explores the nuances of healing and hope.

In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing to show for itself. While polio was being cured, antibiotics were being discovered, and cancer research was developing, the mental health world had no wins. Asylums were full and nobody had figured out how to fix insanity—specifically schizophrenia, the severest mental illness. Scientists became convinced that if they could engineer a pill to create madness, then they could cure it.

For years, they came in on weekends to plan and practice—nearly sixty surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists, preparing to harmonize in a vast medical symphony. For the team at Mayo Clinic, it was their most complex surgery to date: a face transplant. At the heart of this event was Andy Sandness. He grappled with feelings of isolation and shame after a disfiguring suicide attempt but was determined to reclaim his future, to be seen as ordinary, and to belong again.

From his early years with his loving Jewish family to the horrors of Auschwitz to his life as a Nobel Prize-winning writer, Elie Wiesel tells his story. Passionate and poignant, All Rivers Run to the Sea is an unforgettable book of love and rage, doubt and faith, despair and trust, and ultimately, of wisdom.

All In My Head is a memoir by a woman who in her early 50s received a life-shattering diagnosis. It is about her determined search for effective treatment, the birth of a campaign to get proper data and funding for research into glioblastoma (GBM), and finally her coming to terms with the knowledge that she has reached the end of the road.

After years of treating patients, Dr. Michelle Choi had a moment of clarity that rocked her to her core: she wasn’t really helping anyone, and after all these years, she had lost sight of herself. The only way to reclaim some decency would be to demand a big change. After working her entire life to become a doctor, Michelle achieved her dream but realized it wasn’t what she expected. Instead of helping patients feel well, she answered corporate medicine’s unrealistic expectations and practiced assembly-line healthcare.

In No Woman Left Behind, Grant recounts her decision to abandon a promising advertising career, and the ups and downs of building Silicon Valley–based Fistula Foundation from a modest start-up into the global leader in fistula treatment. Through vivid firsthand accounts of surgeons toiling in remote corners of Africa and Asia, we see inside the fight to restore hope to some of the world’s most vulnerable women.

The follow up to Suzanne's Best of Year debut memoir, FRONTAL MATTER: GLUE GONE WILD, STARGAZING is a humorous look at piecing a life back together after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.

Veteran journalists Simon Pearson and Fiona Gorman follow the remarkable life of heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub from his formative years in Egypt, through spectacular success at Cairo University, to his long and distinguished career in Britain. Although at times he clashed with the medical establishment in London, Yacoub pioneered great advances in heart surgery. He was knighted in 1992, and in 2014, he was awarded the highest honor in the gift of the Queen, the Order of Merit.

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.