NIGHT CALLS: The Personal Journey of an Ob/Gyn

by ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 26, 1986

The absorbing career of an obstetrician/gynecologist nearing retirement but who wants to go on delivering until he can't walk without a cane. This is as much the story of an education as it is of a life spent in the service of the birth process and woman's most intimate sexual organ. As a reed student at Northwestern, Eisenberg fell into obstetrics when he discovered that the hands-on quality of working with babies felt more rewarding than the abstractions of his studies. Part of his education was in losing his third-year internship at Yale, a humiliation, then quickly becoming chief resident at an Air Force base in Texas, an over-compensation which made him God almost overnight. It also made him a greater workaholic and poorer father and husband than ever. It was a vast surprise to him, after 15 years, when his wife served notice that she was well on her way to picking up their kids and leaving. His education continued when, after delivering over 1000 babies by tried-and-true hospital routine, a patient demanded that he use the Lamaze method, and allow her husband to coach her on breathing. Eisenberg found he was not delivering the baby after all, but only assisting the mother. Still another woman demanded a home birth and again he found that he had to give up being the Zeus of the delivery room. The revolution in his medical education continued when he could no longer feed inorgasmic women verbal placebos and had to take a course in treating sexual dysfunction that would get him past the mere nuts and bolts of the vagina. Eisenberg is frank about his own emotional life, about one woman who seduced him, his patients' attitudes generally, types of vaginas and attendant problems, and much, much more, most of it fresh, in fact riveting. Sure seller, quite likely to hit the charts. (First serial rights to The New York Times Magazine, Cosmopolitan and The Star--surely a mixed bag.)

Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Arbor House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1986

Categories: NONFICTION