An ER physician gives serious thought to what he does, how he does it and what it does to him.
Memoirs of an emergency-room doctor—his personal life as well as his professional challenges.
Austin pursued a roundabout path to a medical degree and emergency medicine. After dropping out of college to spend nine years as a full-time firefighter and a part-time carpenter, he returned to college at age 27. Enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he took a job as a nursing assistant in the ER at North Carolina Memorial Hospital, which introduced him to his chosen field. He vividly tells all the usual stories of ER crises: men and women with heart attacks or strokes, gunshot and accident victims, violent, vomiting drunks. (Some tales are definitely not for the squeamish.) What is unusual is the degree to which Austin shares the details of his personal life. He writes frankly of his reaction to the birth of his first child, a girl with Down syndrome, and of the difficulties raising her. Getting a good day’s sleep after a night on duty was a major problem in a house with (eventually) three young children; the author recounts with candor and just a dash of dry humor coping attempts ranging from sleeping in a motel or at his mother-in-law’s house to building, and briefly setting fire to, a garage with a soundproof room above it. The stress of his job, which he carried home with him, eventually led him to a therapist who helped him recognize that he had been suppressing negative emotions until they burst out as anger at patients and family. In an epilogue, Austin examines the diametrically opposed perils of cynical detachment and overemotional involvement, pondering the question of just how empathetic a clinician can be and still be competent.
An ER physician gives serious thought to what he does, how he does it and what it does to him.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-393-06560-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
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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