A fresh and personal perspective on health care.
A physician recalls his protracted battle with cancer.
One morning in 2012, debut author Iqbal was yanked out of a peaceful slumber by a lacerating pain below his left ear. Initially, he didn’t think much of it, but then his eye became irritated, and an ophthalmologist noticed that he was also suffering from a touch of facial paralysis. This led the author to make an appointment with a neurologist, who diagnosed him with a less-than-alarming case of Bell’s palsy. Specialists at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, he says, recommended a surgical procedure that would have implanted a layer of gold to allow the affected eye to blink. He decided against it, opting instead to have a metal spring inserted to accomplish the same result. However, some facial paralysis persisted; one surgeon even recommended a frighteningly invasive surgery that involved cutting into Iqbal’s skull and shifting his brain within it. But the author knew, as a trained physician, that recurrent attacks of Bell’s palsy are uncommon and that the condition isn’t progressive. He finally decided, after encouraging words from an old friend, to research the issue himself, as he was exasperated by what he interpreted as doctors’ willful blindness. He concluded he had cancer of the parotid gland, and when another physician confirmed his diagnosis, he was almost jubilant: “ ‘Hallelujah!’ I thought, breathing a big sigh of relief.” This memoir is an eye-opening read that is both chilling and informative. Iqbal helpfully discusses not only his medical tribulations, but also his family support system that made his equanimity under pressure possible—especially the influence of his parents. He also includes, at the end of the book, a section that offers medical and practical advice, as well as moral encouragement, to readers who might be wrestling with cancer in their own lives. The book offers not only an arresting remembrance, but also an inspirational one that’s filled with wisdom gained through difficult experience.
A fresh and personal perspective on health care.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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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