RECOVERING FROM THE HEART ATTACK EXPERIENCE: Emotional Feelings, Medical Facts

The object is worthy, but that's it--the emotional aspect is mostly pop psychology, the medical side is better handled elsewhere. ""A heart attack,"" we're told at the outset, ""is an intensely personal experience."" Families are advised, platitudinously, to act sympathetic, optimistic, and cheerful (""you must put on a strong act,"" but not ""continuously""--""You must always be yourself""). Pointers on getting along with the doctor put most of the burden on the patient; and the interviews here with doctors are a guaranteed turn-off (the cardiologist: ""How do you feel towards your patients? I feel very sympathetic""; the psychiatrist: ""What about the geriatric patient? The older person generally just sits around and mopes. Many older people would rather be invalids""). Weiss touches all the important bases--the family's emotions, sex after a heart attack, the origin of common myths, and (in a second section) the medical facts of what's happening. But the information is too scant to be of real help.