A thoroughly compelling message—without an ethical commitment to the value of every life, “the very humanity of our society”...
A beautifully written memoir about the author’s frustration with the transformation of the profession of medicine into the business of health care, and the unraveling of the doctor-patient bond.
As a leading psychiatrist, Wang has witnessed how “the insurance company has replaced the doctor as a patient’s primary medical relationship.” During her time as chief of the Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service at the University of New Mexico Hospital, her caseload was more than 1,000 new patients each year. She documents how this kind of pressure has been created by insurers with deep pockets who have driven independent doctors out of business by undercutting their fees, refusing to authorize necessary treatments and underpaying doctors for care that is authorized. In the 1990s, Wang welcomed the introduction of the new generation of anti-depressants. However, she soon realized that insurance companies would refuse to pay psychiatrists for treating patients with therapy—“Prozac, even at three dollars a pill, costs[s] far less than regular sessions with a highly trained psychotherapist.” Even though dedicated doctors work long hours at lower pay, tragically their efforts are undermined by profit-mad insurance companies, a transformation that began with the Reagan administration’s flawed argument that the free market would drive down escalating medical costs. The author recounts a number of tragic stories: e.g., a young woman in need of a second liver transplant who could not receive it because the facility where she was originally treated had closed down; an overworked physician so dedicated that she didn’t take time to get her own symptoms checked, and died suddenly of “acute complications of leukemia.” Even though Wang has recently cut back her practice in order to care for her young daughter, her commitment as a healer remains: “Every life is precious. Each life is worth our best effort. Each life lost is an alternate, possibly better world that didn’t happen.”
A thoroughly compelling message—without an ethical commitment to the value of every life, “the very humanity of our society” is at stake.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-59448-753-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
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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