How Not to Be My Patient

A Physician's Secrets for Staying Healthy and Surviving Any Diagnosis

By: Sandra Wendel, Edward T. Creagan MD

Narrated by: Benjamin McLean

Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins

Publisher's summary

The facts are clear. If you want to be healthy for life:

• Learn to talk so your doctor will listen.
• Understand every diagnosis - and realize that you can survive bad news.
• Follow Dr. Ed’s 8 simple commandments for living well - and you’ll live long enough to cash in your 401(k).
• Separate hype from hope, especially with perplexing medical headlines and confusing Internet information.
• Get insight into what your doctor wasn’t taught in medical school.
• Combine the best of traditional and complementary treatments.

Dr. Edward Creagan has been treating very sick patients for more than 35 years. This audiobook is not just about lifestyle choices, although these are important aspects of Dr. Creagan’s healthy living plan. It is about using your precious minutes in the exam room (the average doctor visit is about 16 minutes), forging the right kind of relationship with your care providers (because that world is changing quickly), and understanding and using the health care system - instead of having the system use (and often abuse) you.

“Creagan responsibly and compassionately covers the many steps readers can take to give themselves the best odds of surviving or avoiding cancer and other diseases." (Publishers Weekly)

©2014 Edward Creagan, Sandra Wendel (P)2018 Edward Creagan, Sandra Wendel

Too Much Repition

I listened to this book with the hopes of learning something new, that was not the case. It's a lot of common sense which gets repeated throughout the book. I think a good editor was needed to trim this book down. I feel as though what was said could have been done in half the time. The narrator did a good job reading the material. He has a nice voice and read at a good pace.

I was given this free review copy audio book at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

A book filled with common sense

Within a world filled with so much mystery there are universal truths.... taking care of your body and mind are one of them.

The research in various aspects of disease are moving quickly so writing a Book today or 15 years ago finds
itself outdated in a short period of time.

However the observations of a good Doctor are priceless they do not get old because at the core they are basic common sense.



We all know what foods tend to be good or bad for our health without the study of the latest fad in Nutrition but logic and rational thought as shown by the Writer of this Book can be useful to any listener of this Book.





The Narrator does a good job in presenting the various material to the listener.


This book was given to me for free at my request and I provided this voluntary review.

Extensive basic health info & prevention advice

I feel like this author was confused as to his target audience. The book sounds as if it's aimed at forty-somethings, but the amount of preventative information and basic how to be an effective patient information would be most beneficial to millennials who could put it into practice before they run into high-priced healthcare. Combined with the slightly dated information and quick skimming over organic foods as something his dietician wife is big on while missing the GMO issue almost entirely, along with burying STDs and vaping at the back of the book after going on for way too long about smoking, the book feels a little like one of those massive Readers Digest books from before the internet. This is an update of a previous edition, so it might explain a bit of the disconnected effect when listening straight through instead of jumping chapters according to topic.

Don't get me wrong, the information is good, if basic. But the sheer amount of repetition that doubtless works well in a print copy where someone dips into one chapter and not another while not reading straight through made it a bit of a wade in audio book format.

I do wish I'd had the portion on patient rights and how to handle doctors who are glued to their computer screens before I took on aging parents. But the sheer density of information coupled with repetition of information on exercise, stopping smoking, and so forth made me wish a good editor had cut the repeats and beta readers had flagged the points that needed a serious overhaul for younger listeners.

The narrator is excellent and keeps things moving, so don't be afraid to listen on a long commute. If you've had extensive contact with the health care system, you already know huge chunks of this and are overdue for the preventative sections. If you haven't, this is a good basic guide to avoid spending any more time in the system than you have to. I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.

GREAT ADVICE, HELPFUL INFO

I thought this was a great book, I just turned 50 and I found it very useful and enlightening, it's almost scary to know too much, but it's eye-opening. I have been really thinking about making some changes (not drastic, mind you, but steps in the right..er direction haha), and this really nice timing. I enjoyed the writing, the information, and the narration. There's a lot of information, but I found it easy to listen to and understand :)
I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review.