Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medicine. Show all posts

Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them Review

Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them
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Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them ReviewI don't think I've ever read a book that made me feel more like a slug than this story of Dr. Randy Christensen and his work among homeless teens in a mobile medical clinic in Phoenix.
When his hospital begins to talk about founding a mobile medical van to reach homeless children, Dr. Christensen jumps at the chance to start the work. He motors around the bad parts of town aboard his converted Winnebago, battles skeptical medical and government bureaucracies and fundraises for grants and donations to keep the perpetually cash-strapped medical van going. He works at a camp for diabetic children and dutifully does his rounds at the hospital. He works from sunup to way past sundown, dragging his tired and hungry self home day after day, burdened by the sorrows he sees on the street.
What amazed me most was that Dr. Christensen came to his calling in his 30s, after he has finished his medical training, married and is starting his practice and a family. While your 30s can certainly be considered young, it is also the time of life when most of us have already immersed ourselves in our marginally meaningful lives and couldn't summon up the energy to do just one of the things Dr. Christensen does with his life. More power to him!
This is an inspiring story of one man's battles with the pull of the street, the intractability of the healthcare system and government safety nets that are failing his kids, and the daily challenges of a cutting edge medical mission. His stories of kids like Nicole, Sugar, Matt, Donald and Nizhoni will linger in your heart long after you've closed the book. The stories of their successes are inspiring, but the stories of lives that end in tragedy are equally heartwrenching.
Toward the end of the book, I began to feel sorry for the doctor's family, as his wife and three kids obviously took a back seat to his work. I could barely read the story of one of his wife's miscarriages and Dr. Christenson's near-fatal neglect. I'm glad I read to the end of the book, though, as on the tenth anniversary of the mobile clinic he seems to have realized that he needed to cut back and attend to his own family. Again, more power to Dr. Christensen!Ask Me Why I Hurt: The Kids Nobody Wants and the Doctor Who Heals Them Overview

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Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam Review

Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam
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Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam ReviewCharlatan is a thoroughly enjoyable (and pertinent even today!) tale of medical quackery a man who spent years battling against the country's leading quack. The self-style "Doctor" Brinkley had no formal medical training and purchased his degrees. He started selling patent medicine for sexual problems (and other ailments) but soon found his niche. About 1919 he began transplanting goat testicles in men: $750 a pop. That's $750 back then, and no credit given. But you did get to visit the goat pen behind the clinic in Kansas to pick out a young billygoat of your choice.
By today's standards, the operations were eye-popping in terms of the lack of attention to asepsis/antisepsis. Gangrene and lockjaw were among the perils one too often faced. Brinkley got very rich, and very famous: he twice ran for governor of Kansas and was narrowly defeated both times. When the Kansas Medical Board came down hard on him (at last), Brinkley moved to Del Rio, Texas, and set up the most powerful radio station in the world just across the border. This staion was used to broadcast the program Medical Question Box which would answer questions for a fee and which promoted quack medicine available through mail order. Pulling in a million dollars a year (in 1930s dollars, not 2008 dollars) was no mean feat.
Nemesis, in the form of Dr Morris Fishbein, finally proved to be Brinkley's undoing. Fishbein spent his life fighting and exposing medical quackery, and regularly wrote articles for the JAMA. It took Fishbein 10 years to bring down Brinkley: the climax of the book is a magnificently described court case where Brinkley was a disaster on the stand. The author notes that Fishbein sometimes was overzealous in his pursuit of what he considered quackery--occasionally going after what are respectable areas of medicine nowadays. But even so, this is not a tale about an Inspector Javert pursuing Jean Valjean. Justice does triumph in the end, more or less.
This is a wonderfully written book about quackery, gullibility, money, politics, and the appetite of the public for medical cures. We can look back at the 1920's and 30's with relief that we're better off because of the diligence of the Fishbeins. But at the same time "alternative" medical treatments abound nowadays. You can go into almost any large drugstore chain and buy water labelled as medicine for earaches and the like (which is probably harmless but not helpful) and herbal products which can kill you. Quackery lives on. Ou sont les Fishbeins d'antan? to mangle a famous line. Brock's book reads like a good mystery, with well-drawn characters, a great storyline, a climactic trial, and some lessons for today. You'll enjoy this.Charlatan: America's Most Dangerous Huckster, the Man Who Pursued Him, and the Age of Flimflam Overview

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Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon Review

Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon
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Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon ReviewThis book was amazing...I started reading it, standing in Barnes and Nobel with a cup of coffee....I couldn't put it down and ended up buying it before the store closed....I laughed, I cried, but mostly some of the tales of profound love between humans and animals, gave me chills. Although there are many good animal books out there, this one was exceptional. It was incredibly well-written. If this author ever decides to become an award-winning novelist, he could do that...and perhaps he will, with this book! He captures the humor, pathos and all in-between of the human-animal bond. And, I might add, I usually avoid these books, because I hate the part where the pet dies etc. etc. but really, although there are sad passages in this, as would be expected in a vet hospital story, the main ingredient is the total celebration, awesome really, of the bond and great love between humans and their pets. Although there were many, one story that captured me was the man who loved his dog so much, that when the dog died the inevitable death of old age, the man took a photo of the dog, cut it out and wore it on a chain around his neck for a whole year, to keep the flame of love alive for his beloved dog. There are unforgettable characters in this book, human and animal.....and the writing is truly excellent. Wow, what a book!Tell Me Where It Hurts: A Day of Humor, Healing, and Hope in My Life as an Animal Surgeon Overview

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Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis Review

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis
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Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis ReviewEvery patient would love a look inside her physician's head to glimpse that meticulous moment-to-moment process that yields a great--even life-saving--diagnosis. That's exactly what EVERY PATIENT TELLS A STORY does. Bless Dr. Sanders for having the heart, wisdom and eloquence to lay open the M.D. brain for all of us nervous lay people who, at those moments of health crisis, can only pray we've picked a good doc.
It turns out that the things we patients secretly crave from our doctors--eye contact, focused conversation, LISTENING, the reassuring touch of the physician's educated hands on our painful abdomens or dislocated shoulders--are also the most vital tools of a truly great diagnostician. Of course we're grateful for medical technology, but as Dr. Sanders so brilliantly argues, these technical advancements work best when physicians' own powers of observation--and yes, intuition--are also fully engaged.
The last chapter is a dramatic departure from the rest of the book. Here Dr. Sanders tells us a very personal diagnosis story, one involving the untimely death of her younger sister. The gift of such an intimate conclusion reminds the reader of the humane impulse that so clearly motivated its author on every preceding page.Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis Overview

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