A thorough, thoughtful resource for people facing a life-altering health situation.
An ALS patient offers advice for coping with a devastating illness.
Dunsky (Common Sense Is Not All That Common, 2015), a physician, has been living with ALS —amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease—for seven years. Once he accepted his diagnosis (not an easy process, as he admits), he set about learning as much as possible about his condition so that he could “live with ALS while maintaining as good a quality of life as possible.” Now, he’s sharing what he’s learned with others. The resulting book contains the kind of comprehensive, detailed information people facing a terminal illness need in order to make educated decisions about their treatment and care. In 75 short chapters he covers everything from the mechanisms of the disease to treatment options to decisions about end-of-life care, always maintaining a positive yet realistic tone. One of his first tasks is to reassure readers that an ALS diagnosis does not have to mean total disability is imminent, though “life will change dramatically as symptoms of weakness and paralysis advance.” With that in mind, Dunsky strongly recommends a proactive approach to disease management. Patients should inform themselves about the likely course of ALS, make decisions while they are still able to do so, and be willing to accept interventions, such as motorized wheelchairs or breathing devices, rather than resisting the need for assistance. He also goes into detail about the nitty-gritty issues that will affect people with ALS, from choosing comfortable clothing to finding the right bed. Dunsky is a doctor (though his specialty is unrelated to ALS), and occasionally his language might be a bit technical for a lay reader unfamiliar with terms like “neural cellular metabolism” and “neurotrophic factors,” which aren’t always adequately explained. And while his discussion of the financial aspects of managing an ALS diagnosis is welcome, more information for people who lack the means to make expensive renovations to their homes or afford high-end medical equipment would be useful. But those minor faults are more than balanced out by Dunsky’s sensitive, practical advice.
A thorough, thoughtful resource for people facing a life-altering health situation.Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5349-8866-8
Page Count: 340
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 27, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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