A harrowing though not uncommon story.
Huber (Creative Writing/Ashland Univ. and Georgia Southern Univ., Opa Nobody, 2008) chronicles her torturous efforts to navigate the health-care system.
Growing up in the 1970s in a middle-class family, the author experienced a fairly uneventful childhood and adolescence—during which she was “laser focused” on academic success—marred only by occasional severe headaches. However, by her sophomore year in college, she began suffering from severe panic attacks and blackouts. Initially she rejected the medical recommendation that she take “a little blue pill” and turned instead to alternative medicine. Not only did she entrust her health to a “patchwork safety net of community health practitioners,” but after graduation she took paid work as a lobbyist for universal health care. Ironically the job did not come with health benefits, and she began a 13-year slide into poverty. With 11 gaps in health-insurance coverage, her health worsened, even though, when money permitted, she took antidepressants. During that time, she worked at a succession of jobs, including community organizer, reporter at a local newspaper, adjunct college lecturer and a freelance writer, earning two MFA degrees along the way. The author describes her life during those years as a “torrid and twisted love affair with health insurance.” By the time she was 33, she was married, although soon to be divorced, and the mother of a young child. The good news was that she had learned to game the public-health system and deal with insurance companies by using “a bit of logic and a bit of force.” In 2006, she accepted a full-time teaching job at Georgia Southern, a position that came with major health-insurance benefits. After a thorough medical examination, she learned that many of her health problems were caused by a malformed jaw and were treatable.
A harrowing though not uncommon story.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8032-2623-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Bison/Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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