Medical Memoirs

An extraordinary memoir about the cutting-edge brain therapy that dramatically changed the life and mind of John Elder Robison, the New York Times bestselling author of Look Me in the Eye NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST Imagine spending the first forty years of...

The freezing Antarctic winter shuts supply lines down completely; conditions are too treacherous for planes and boats and the only connection with the rest of the world is satellite hook-up. During the winter of 1999, Dr. Nielsen, the only physician on a staff of 41 people, discovered a lump in her breast. She was forced to perform a biopsy and in June began to treat herself with chemotherapy, in order to insure that she could survive until her rescue in October.

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.

Justin, a young athlete diagnosed with over two hundred cancerous tumors in his body, was breaking track and field records at the age of thirteen before he was diagnosed. Hear about the fortitude of a child determined to live...forever. This true story is beautifully written through the eyes of his mother. She writes about the miraculous, the intimate moments that almost broke not just her, but her son and family. Hope was not lost in this remarkable story of redemption. The power of God is reflected clearly through these words of pain, fear, death, and salvation.

In researching his acclaimed true-crime books, Philip Carlo interviewed some of the most infamous criminals and killers of our times in prisons and on death rows throughout the country. He was able to forge trusting relationships with his subjects, enabling him to extract the facts behind their monstrous acts and identify what motivated them to commit their horrific crimes.

Echo Heron served for 18 years as a critical care nurse. In this book, she relates the true and riveting stories of nurses staff whose every-day experiences in the front line of medicine will inspire the listener.

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.

An unflinching and luminous memoir that explores a father’s philosophical transformation when he must reconsider the questions what makes us human? and whose life is worth living? Before becoming a father, Chris Gabbard was a fast-track academic finishing his doctoral dissertation at Stanford...

This is the true story of a very special man whose life was suddenly and forever changed by a rare disease. Dealing with a severe backache for three days, he was taken to an emergency room. For five grueling months, his dignity, as well as his very self was stripped away. Trapped in a system that all too often is not healthcare, but Healthcareless.

Eleanor met Aaron when she was just a teenager, and he was working at a local record store - older, experienced, and irresistibly charming. Escaping the clichés of fleeting young love, their summer romance bloomed into a relationship that survived college and culminated in a marriage and two children. From the outside looking in, their life had all the trappings of what most would consider a success story. But, as in any marriage, things weren’t always as they seemed.

This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises). What if a lifesaving...

A coming-of-age memoir for modern times, Bleeder is the incredibly compelling tale of author Shelby Smoak. A hemophiliac, Smoak discovered he had been infected with HIV during a blood transfusion at the start of his college career. This devastating and destabilizing news led Smoak to see his world from an entirely new perspective, one in which life-threatening illness was perpetually just around the corner. Set in the 1990s along the North Carolina coast, Bleeder traces Smoak’s quest for love in a world that feels increasingly dangerous.

As a happily married, 55-year-old professional woman, Susan had it all-or thought she did - until the day of her shocking diagnosis with stage IV Mantle Cell Lymphoma, a rare and aggressive disease. Ninety-eight percent of her bone marrow was cancerous, and a heart attack or brain aneurism was imminent. Within minutes of being admitted to the hospital, her beautifully ordinary life disappeared.

Helena Rho was six years old when her family left Seoul, Korea, for America and its opportunities. Years later, her Korean-ness behind her, Helena had everything a model minority was supposed to want: she was married to a white American doctor and had a beautiful home, two children, and a career as an assistant professor of pediatrics. For decades she fulfilled the expectations of others. All the while Helena kept silent about the traumas - both professional and personal - that left her anxious yet determined to escape.

Fleeing Communist Czechoslovakia with his wife Marica, Vilcek continued his research at NYU School of Medicine, going on to establish a highly successful career in biomedical research and creating one of the most important and trailblazing medicines of our age.

Citizen-Surgeon takes listeners into the otherwise inaccessible, remote, and intense world of life and surgery within a combat zone. In the backdrop of the US-led war in Afghanistan, amid a defining US Marine Corps’ offensive to conquer the Marjah region of Helmand Province, [then] US Navy Commander Paul Roach and his company-mates assemble and congeal as a medical unit in Southern California, transport from the United States to their tents in Dasht-e-Margo (the “Desert of Death”) in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.

When Ronald Reagan chose C. Everett Koop to be Surgeon General of the United States in 1981, liberal politicians, women's groups, and even the public health community opposed the nomination because of his conservative social views and strong anti-abortion beliefs. By the time he left office in 1989, the same people who had vilified him as "Dr. Kook" were singing his praises, and many conservative politicians and activists were criticizing him as a traitor.

It Started with a Finger Up My A*se is not your typical prostate cancer memoir—it’s a brutally honest, unexpectedly funny, and a deeply human journey through a diagnosis millions of men face but few talk about. I was diagnosed in 2024, and what followed was equal parts terrifying, ridiculous, painful, and oddly enlightening. This audiobook is filled with things you won’t hear in polite conversation, but probably should—from awkward intrusive exams and midnight fears, to German penis pumps and injections in a place they do not belong.

Médecin généraliste depuis une dizaine d'années, le docteur Gentamycine a soigneusement noté les meilleures répliques de ses patients... et le moins que l'on puisse dire c'est qu'ils ont du talent ! L'humour est-il un bon moyen de guérir ? En tout cas, il permet de détendre l'atmosphère parfois pesante d'une consultation.

Just when Linda Varisco thought the storm had passed, her life plunges even deeper into turmoil, forcing her to confront the unimaginable. With her dazzling million-dollar smile now hiding more secrets than it reveals, Linda bravely steps into single parenthood, rebuilding her chiropractic practice and trying to piece together a new normal from the shattered fragments left behind by her husband’s betrayal and addiction.