A well-researched, compassionately observed study of intensive rehabilitation, its complexities and, most of all, its people.
Macenka, a Pulitzer Prize–nominated reporter for the Richmond Times-Dispatch, details the leading edge of trauma treatment at the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center, where service members with horrifying injuries receive sensitive, well-rounded care.
At McGuire Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Richmond, Va., the PRC—one of five around the country—provides intensive rehabilitative care to service members and veterans with severe injuries to more than one organ system, often including the brain. In late 2011, Macenka received approval to witness the PRC’s inner workings. Over 18 months, he followed administrators, doctors, therapists and staff as they treated several patients trying to find a new normal; those patients’ stories are told here in vivid detail. Macenka also describes the families’ points of view, from the first phone call with the bad news through the months of life-juggling rearrangements and the sometimes-heartbreaking decisions that must follow. Three key principles have made the Richmond PRC “the crown jewel in the VA”: “managing records quickly and efficiently, building relationships with the patients, and involving the family and other caregivers in the process.” This “relationship-based medicine,” much more personalized and extensive than most people get through managed care, is especially important for treating traumatic brain injuries, since—in a phrase used several times—no two brain injuries are alike. Some patients, despite everything the PRC can do, don’t survive; for others, marriages can fail, dreams fade, and bitterness can be difficult, though not impossible, to overcome. Well-written and absorbing, this book convincingly shows the value of relationship-based medicine and the high costs in time and money of severe, multiorgan injuries. Patients become people, and Macenka’s interviews show the heartening generosity and incredible dedication of caregivers, both outside and inside the Richmond PRC. Most Americans, of course, can’t access or can’t afford this crown-jewel treatment, a fact Macenka mentions but doesn’t dwell on; nevertheless, that topic might have been worth exploring. Hopefully, more trauma centers will follow PRC’s example.
A well-researched, compassionately observed study of intensive rehabilitation, its complexities and, most of all, its people.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1493635535
Page Count: 370
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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