Heart Disease, Cancer, and More: a Nurse's Memoir
Heart Disease, Cancer, and More: a Nurse's Memoir

Author: Audrey Phillips

Publisher:

Published: 2013-05-25

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 9781482763966

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This is a true story of a registered nurse who worked in a hospital setting for over twenty years, working primarily in intensive care units. After taking care of critically ill patients for years, she contracts heart disease, creating the need for the placement of three stents in her heart. Undaunted, she continues to work. Six years later, she comes down with endometrial and pancreatic cancer, both at the same time. Later, she develops more problems and undergoes open-heart surgery with three vessels bypassed. During her career, her life is complicated by disagreeable working conditions and monumental personal problems. It is a story of her hard-headed persistance to overcome adversities, resulting in her ultimate survival which finally culminates in a happy ending.

A Woman's Guide to Living with Heart Disease
A Woman's Guide to Living with Heart Disease

Author: Carolyn Thomas

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press

Published: 2017-11-28

Total Pages: 231

ISBN-13: 1421424207

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Whether you're a freshly diagnosed patient, a woman who's been living with heart disease for years, or a practitioner who cares about women's health, A Woman's Guide to Living with Heart Disease will help you feel less alone and advocate for better health care.

Critical Care
Critical Care

Author: Theresa Brown

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2010-05-18

Total Pages: 196

ISBN-13: 0061999431

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“Among all the recent books on medicine, Critical Care stands alone.“ — Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam “A must read for anyone who wants to understand healthcare. Extraordinary.” — Elizabeth Cohen, MPH, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Critical Care is the powerful and absorbing memoir of Theresa Brown—a regular contributor to the New York Times blog “Well”—about her experiences during the first year on the job as an oncology nurse; in the process, Brown sheds brilliant light on issues of mortality and meaning in our lives.

Healing
Healing

Author: Theresa Brown

Publisher: Algonquin Books

Published: 2022-04-12

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1643752960

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From the New York Times bestselling author of The Shift comes a frank look at navigating the world of healthcare as a cancer nurse becomes a patient and experiences the system from the other side.​ Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being a “difficult” patient could mean she gets worse care. Of the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, many have had, like Brown, a treatable form of the disease. Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit health care industry “cures” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for. As she did so brilliantly in her New York Times bestseller, The Shift, Brown relays the unforgettable details of her daily life—the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the bureaucratic frustrations—but this time from her new perch as a patient, looking back at some of her own cases and considering what she didn’t know then about the warping effects of fear and the healing virtues of compassion. “People failed me when I was a patient and I failed patients when working as a nurse. I see that now,” she writes. Healing is must-read for all of us who have tried to find healing through our health-care system.

Both Sides of the Bed
Both Sides of the Bed

Author: Annette B. Bryant

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2016-02-02

Total Pages: 108

ISBN-13: 1460264096

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Both Sides of the Bed is the story of Annette Boyd Bryant, a career nurse who survived two battles with breast cancer and also fell victim to a stroke. This memoir is an account of her life and experiences, going from saving lives to considering taking her own, from health care professional to patient, and back. It’s an insight into the world of health care from both perspectives. It’s the story of her adjusting to her new normal. It’s the story of her triumph and her will. Both Sides of the Bed is the inspiring story of a woman who fought tooth and nail to keep her own life, so she could use it to help others keep theirs.

Blood Brothers
Blood Brothers

Author: Lisa Solis DeLong

Publisher: Tate Publishing

Published: 2011-07-05

Total Pages: 240

ISBN-13: 161777152X

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Not many people experience the death of a child; fewer yet face the possibility of having to do it twice. Justin DeLong was a bright, energetic child when he was diagnosed with leukemia at age five. After battling the cancer, he went into remission for ten years, where he laughed and ran long-distance races and slowly entered adolescence. Sadly, in July 2000 he succumbed to the disease twelve days after his fifteenth birthday. Lisa DeLong and her family were left to pick up the pieces and try to find joy in life without their beloved eldest son and brother. Then, six years later, they discovered something terrifying-their youngest son, Jacob, had leukemia too. Blood Brothers is Lisa DeLong's story of what it has been like to have two sons with leukemia, a lifetime apart. As she struggles to understand how a loving God could allow this to happen, she searches for a way to keep her marriage, her family, and her own sanity together. Whether you're a mother, someone who has experienced cancer either in yourself or someone you love, or a medical professional, the story of these two Blood Brothers will speak to your heart and allow you to see how with faith, great triumph can come from unimaginable tragedy.

The Language of Kindness
The Language of Kindness

Author: Christie Watson

Publisher: Crown

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 1524761656

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#1 INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A moving, lyrical, beautifully-written portrait of a nurse and the lives she has touched Christie Watson spent twenty years as a nurse, and in this intimate, poignant, and remarkably powerful book, she opens the doors of the hospital and shares its secrets. She takes us by her side down hospital corridors to visit the wards and meet her unforgettable patients. In the neonatal unit, premature babies fight for their lives, hovering at the very edge of survival, like tiny Emmanuel, wrapped up in a sandwich bag. On the cancer wards, the nurses administer chemotherapy and, long after the medicine stops working, something more important--which Watson learns to recognize when her own father is dying of cancer. In the pediatric intensive care unit, the nurses wash the hair of a little girl to remove the smell of smoke from the house fire. The emergency room is overcrowded as ever, with waves of alcohol and drug addicted patients as well as patients like Betty, a widow suffering chest pain, frail and alone. And the stories of the geriatric ward--Gladys and older patients like her--show the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society. Through the smallest of actions, nurses provide vital care and kindness. All of us will experience illness in our lifetime, and we will all depend on the support and dignity that nurses offer us; yet the women and men who form the vanguard of our health care remain unsung. In this age of fear, hate, and division, Christie Watson has written a book that reminds us of all that we share, and of the urgency of compassion.

The Emperor of All Maladies
The Emperor of All Maladies

Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2011-08-09

Total Pages: 624

ISBN-13: 1439170916

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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize and a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, this New York Times bestseller is “an extraordinary achievement” (The New Yorker)—a magnificent, profoundly humane “biography” of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence. Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful adversary that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out “war against cancer.” The book reads like a literary thriller with cancer as the protagonist. Riveting, urgent, and surprising, The Emperor of All Maladies provides a fascinating glimpse into the future of cancer treatments. It is an illuminating book that provides hope and clarity to those seeking to demystify cancer.

Healing Hearts
Healing Hearts

Author: Kathy Magliato, M.D.

Publisher: Crown Archetype

Published: 2010-01-26

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 0307589196

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An inspiring, surprising, sometimes shocking, and ultimately deeply informative memoir of the high-stakes, high-pressured life of a female heart surgeon Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of the few female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group—those surgeons specially trained to perform heart transplants. Heart Matters is the story of the making of a surgeon who is also a wife and mother. In this powerful and moving memoir, which inspired the NBC series Heart Beat, Dr. Magliato takes us into her highly demanding, physically intense, male-dominated world and shows us how she masterfully works to save patients' lives every day, while also maintaining balance at home. Heart Matters is also a wake-up call to all women about their number one killer - heart disease - and explains how to avoid becoming a victim. Magliato offers a vivid behind-the-scenes view of what really goes on in an operating room and the real-life drama that occurs there. She shows the passion and commitment between patient and doctor, revealing that, at the end of a long day, it's our hearts that matter most. From the Hardcover edition.

Another Chance at Life
Another Chance at Life

Author: Leonore H. Dvorkin

Publisher: Leonore H. Dvorkin

Published: 2010-05-11

Total Pages: 143

ISBN-13:

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In 1998, at the age of 52, I had breast cancer and a left-side mastectomy. That was my eighth major operation, but my first for the treatment of a life-threatening disease. Almost immediately after the operation, I became aware that there were unexpected benefits to be reaped from this experience, benefits which ended up changing my life and many of my attitudes. Eventually I decided to write a book detailing those many benefits and my thoughts on a variety of topics related to health, health care, self-image, and the value of courage and optimism in the face of adversity. Surviving breast cancer left me a happier, calmer, more focused, and more appreciative person. Now my principal message to other women is that breast cancer does not have to be an entirely negative, terror-inducing experience. On the contrary, it can leave them better off than they were before, both physically and emotionally. I know, because it happened to me. My book is primarily the story of that physical and emotional journey. The five appendices offer a wealth of practical information on risk factors for breast cancer, ways to help prevent it, and much more.