A skillful blending of personal experience and public concerns.
What begins as a memoir of one man’s encounter with modern medicine expands into contemplation of the state of health care today.
Neugeboren (Transforming Madness, 1999, etc.) was told in 1999 that his coronary arteries were nearly 100 percent blocked and that he must immediately undergo bypass surgery. Fortunately, four of his close friends—Rich, a cardiologist; Phil, a neurologist; Jerry, an AIDS doctor; and Arthur, a psychologist—shepherded him through this crisis, making sure he got the best of care. Reflecting on the experience afterward, he concluded that while his surgical procedure depended on high technology, what made the difference between life and death was decidedly low-tech. His successful outcome, he asserts, was due in large part to the fact that he received the attention of doctors who knew him and listened to him. His opinion was confirmed about a year later when consulting two reputable New York urologists. The first never connected with him as a human being; the second paid attention to his concerns and answered his questions. For Neugeboren, who left the second doctor’s office feeling reassured and relieved even though this physician’s assessment of his condition was more serious, the crucial difference was that the first doctor practiced the impersonal science of medicine, while the second combined science with the art of medicine. That art, he warns, is often missing for many of us in our encounters with modern medicine. The author includes numerous excerpts from his own journals and long quotes from conversations with his four closely involved friends, who discuss not only the author’s particular case but the state of medicine today, how they came to choose their professions, and what they think about their work. In his examination of the healing arts, Neugeboren also draws on the books of numerous other thoughtful writers on medical matters, including Lewis Thomas, Sherwin Nuland, Gerald Grob, and Daniel Callahan.
A skillful blending of personal experience and public concerns.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-618-11211-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2003
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
PERSPECTIVES
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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