Medical Memoirs

Author Cory Franklin, MD, who headed the hospital's intensive care unit from the 1970s through the 1990s, shares his most unique and bizarre experiences, including the deadly Chicago heatwave of 1995, treating the first AIDS patients in the country before the disease was diagnosed, the nurse with rare Munchausen syndrome, the only surviving ricin victim, and the professor with Alzheimer's hiding the effects of the wrong medication.

Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband, George, encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud and startled owners of a near-derelict croft house - a farmer’s stone cottage - on “a small acre” of land. Mary assumed duties as the island’s district nurse.

In every hospital emergency department there is a room reserved for trauma. It is a place where life and death are separated by the thinnest of margins. A place where some families celebrate the most improbable of victories while others face the most devastating of losses. A place where what matters the most in this life is revealed. Trauma Room Two is just such a place. In this collection of short stories, Dr. Green takes the listener inside the hidden emotional landscape of emergency medicine.

One day, on her way to a date, Isabella Huffington gets hit by a bike. What begins as a concussion with a diagnosed recovery time of seven-to-ten days becomes more than two years of debilitating pain with no apparent end and a string of unhelpful doctor and specialist visits. In the wreckage, jobs are canceled. Leases are broken. There is no second date. What’s left is Isabella, her body, and her pain. Because the source of her pain cannot be located within the body, she is told over and over that her pain is psychosomatic. And Isabella believes it, over and over.

CELEBRATING MORE THAN 300 CONSECUTIVE WEEKS ATOP THE DOCTORS & MEDICINE HUMOR BESTSELLER CHARTS! There are things a man doesn’t talk about. And then there are the things he writes down. No one would believe them otherwise. Meet Dr. Paul Waymack: trauma surgeon, burn specialist, military officer, and—for a time—Cold War envoy operating under presidential orders with Soviet agents watching his every move. See the world’s dangers through the eyes of a man who is most at home when everyone else is falling apart. Imagine Larry David dropped into a Tom Clancy plot. Have you ever wondered ...

A “remarkably candid and sensitive” (The Wall Street Journal) true crime memoir from Barbara Butcher, a trailblazing New York City death investigator, who reveals the untold stories behind more than 5,500 death scenes, including the nation’s most horrific tragedy: the 9/11 attacks. When...

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER PULITZER PRIZE FINALIST OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD This inspiring, exquisitely observed memoir finds hope and beauty in the face of insurmountable odds as an idealistic young neurosurgeon attempts to answer the question, What makes a life worth living?...

#1 Best Seller in Emergency Medical Services (Kindle Store) #1 Best Seller in Emergency Medicine (Kindle Store) #1 New Release in Emergency Medicine (Kindle Store) Some calls you never forget. Some nights you never escape. In Louder Than Sirens, Austin Lynn takes readers deep into the chaotic and painful world of emergency medical services with raw honesty and emotional depth. He shares what it is really like to serve on the front lines, where tragedy is routine, the stakes are high, and the impact lingers long after the sirens fade. From devastating calls to the slow, silent weight of ...

In this final volume of her memoir trilogy, Dr. Erica Elliott begins her medical training as an enthusiastic, wide-eyed student but soon becomes a disillusioned doctor, sick from toxic chemicals at the clinic where she works. This health catastrophe, followed by a near-fatal accident and the harrowing, experimental brain surgery that saved her life, forces Erica off the path of mainstream medicine and onto a path that leads to her profound healing. More than a half-century after a Navajo grandmother offered a prophecy about her life, Erica fulfills it in ways she never could have imagined.

A riveting exploration of the most difficult and important part of what doctors do, by Yale School of Medicine physician Dr. Lisa Sanders, author of the monthly New York Times Magazine column "Diagnosis," the inspiration for the hit Fox TV series House, M.D. "The experience of being ill can be...

"25 Real Patient Stories" reveals the untold experiences that unfold within the walls of hospitals and outpatient clinics, offering a touching glimpse into the humanity that binds patients and medical professionals together. Join a junior doctor working in psychiatry, family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, and many more medical specialties. Poisonous mushrooms, naked streakers and bodily waste on the walls - follow along 25 crazy, funny, and sometimes heartbreaking stories of real patients. Each story brings to life the raw emotions, tough decisions, and unexpected moments that shape ...

Do you remember the 1970s when doctors made house calls, delivered babies, worked long hours, and listened to their patients? Remember when there were no cell phones, no computerized medical records, and the doctor was one of your best friends? I invite you to walk down memory lane and return to a simpler time when life was about family, friends, church, and relationships. Doctor Matlock practiced medicine for forty-seven years, long enough to witness profound changes in medical practice, technology, and society. He was board certified in both Family Medicine and Emergency Medicine during ...

From acclaimed author and playwright Hanif Kureishi comes an urgent and stunning memoir about rebuilding a new life in the wake of devastating physical loss. In late 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, he realized he could no longer walk. He could do nothing without the...

A nonfiction narrative/memoir of living in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories in 2022 and 2023, through repeated conflicts and escalations, up to, including and beyond the October 7 attack on Israel and the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza. Leading a $10 million health and humanitarian assistance program there, Mr. Wind shares insights about the realities and paradoxes of Gaza and struggling to provide humanitarian assistance in the face of conflict and the dangers to innocent civilians. The insights of Allan J. “Alonzo” Wind retired USAID Foreign Service Officer and ...

In his award-winning debut essay collection, What Cannot Be Undone, Walter M. Robinson shares surprising stories of illness and medicine that do not sacrifice hard truth for easy dramatics. These true stories are filled with details of difficult days and nights in the world of high-tech medical care, and they show the ongoing struggle in making critical decisions with no good answer. This collection presents the raw moments where his expertise in medical ethics and pediatrics are put to the test.

San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.

Known as one of America's most dangerous cities, New Orleans plays host to incidents ranging from the tragic and disturbing to the completely bizarre - and during his career as an emergency medic, Jon McCarthy saw it all. He chronicles some of the most formative calls of his career in this autobiography that sounds like crime fiction. McCarthy demonstrates with detail and clarity that the difficult choice is often the right choice. While not for the faint of heart, each entry in this collection provides poignant insight into the bonds between medics and the people and city they serve.

After years of prosecuting hard-core criminals, rising legal star Alan Bell took a private sector job in South Florida's newest skyscraper. Suddenly, he suffered such bizarre medical symptoms, doctors suspected he'd been poisoned by the Mafia. Bell's rapidly declining health forced him to flee his glamorous Miami life to a sterile "bubble" in the remote Arizona desert.

Code Gray is a “provocative and meaningful” (Theresa Brown, New York Times bestselling author of Healing) narrative-driven medical memoir that places you directly in the crucible of urgent life-or-death decision-making, offering insights that can help us cope at a time when the world around...

When Dr. Sanjay Gupta travels the world for CNN to report on natural disasters, conflicts, and catastrophes, he illuminates the stories of the affected and the afflicted. But a few times in his career, while reporting abroad, he’s been asked to don his surgeon’s cap and gloves to intervene in high-stakes medical emergencies. Far from his controlled and highly regulated operating rooms, Gupta found himself trying to save lives in the most makeshift and trying conditions.