The author’s hard-won wisdom is well suited for anyone who ends up spending time in a waiting room, on an examination table...
First-time author Cyr draws from her years of experience as a patient with several chronic ailments in this useful collection of suggestions and advice for other patients.
With few exceptions, going to the doctor isn’t considered a fun time by most people. However, that doesn’t preclude taking steps to be educated and assertive in being your own best advocate, as this guide illustrates. While most readers may be fortunate enough to avoid long-term health care or chronic illnesses, many people, including the author, aren’t so fortunate. This book is a thorough guide to the multiple issues that patients can face and teaches readers how to address them with tact and determination to achieve the best outcomes. Cyr breaks down the material into several general groupings and illustrates her own experiences as a way to drive points home effectively. The wealth of experience Cyr has amassed as a patient and health care advocate shows in her no-nonsense, straightforward explanations and in the easy way concepts are introduced and broken down for readers new to both medical and insurance terminology. Stylistically, the prose is utilitarian but suited to the task at hand, and the chapters are organized logically to make progress between stages of the doctor-patient relationship simple and clean. The material occasionally shows signs of needing updates—some of the issues Cyr points out with prescriptions lacking basic information have been corrected; the information she posits as missing has been included by default with prescription medication for a few years. But, as an overall body of knowledge, Cyr’s work is both thorough and timely. For patients with chronic illnesses and their loved ones, this book can serve as an indispensable guide and helpful resource. For insight into the experiences and issues chronically ill patients face, Cyr’s book may have even greater value to health care providers of any stripe.
The author’s hard-won wisdom is well suited for anyone who ends up spending time in a waiting room, on an examination table or undergoing medical procedures.Pub Date: July 10, 2012
ISBN: 978-1463648800
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
A cogent “horror story” about the plot to reanimate mid-20th-century White male supremacy at the expense of abortion access.
Incisive look at the destructive path of anti-abortion ideology in the U.S.
Even though most Americans believe in a woman’s right to choose—“consistent research has shown that more than 7 in 10 Americans support legal access to abortion”—the radical right has succeeded in steadily eroding reproductive freedoms since Roe v. Wade. According to NARAL Pro-Choice America leaders Hogue and Langford, the campaign against abortion is but a means to an end for the architects of the pro-life movement. Their true aim is the uncontested dominion of White Christian men. The battle began in 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education struck down “state laws used by segregationists to maintain structural inequality in the nation’s schools.” In 1976, the IRS rescinded the tax-exempt status of the Rev. Jerry Falwell’s segregationist Bob Jones University. What has followed, argue the authors convincingly, is more than a half-century of machinations designed “to halt progressive cultural change and maintain power for a privileged minority.” Anti-abortion rhetoric is just a weapon, driven by design, propaganda, disinformation, and cowed Republican politicians—hallmarks of the Trump era. Hogue and Langdon make a strong case that the rises of Trump, fake news, and science skepticism are not flukes but rather the culmination of a dogged campaign by forces still smarting from desegregation and second- and third-wave feminism. The reproductive freedom of American women is the victim of an “anti-democratic power grab on a historic scale.” The authors build a chilling case that the startling 2019 wave of abortion bans across the nation should serve as a canary in the coal mine for citizens concerned with democracy and a catalyst for bolder messaging, better strategic planning, and sustained action to combat disinformation.
A cogent “horror story” about the plot to reanimate mid-20th-century White male supremacy at the expense of abortion access.Pub Date: July 22, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-947492-50-9
Page Count: 280
Publisher: Strong Arm Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2020
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