-
Lightning Flowers
- My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
- Narrated by: Katherine E. Standefer
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy for $28.50
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
Children of the Land
- By: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man’s attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence. Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines, and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
-
-
Phenomenal
- By Amelie on 07-18-20
-
Dubliners - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Ulysses
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Tadhg Hynes
- Length: 47 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This compilation contains three of James Joyce's most important and recognisable works. Presented here in the order Joyce wrote them they provide an opportunity to enter his world from the comparatively shallow end of "Dubliners" to the deep end of "Ulysses". "Dubliners" contains 15 short stories in Joyce's intended sequence, each with its own moment of realisation or epiphany, ending with what is considered to be one of the finest short stories in literature, "The Dead". "Portrait" could be seen as the prelude to "Ulysses". It shows the growth of Stephen Dedalus (James Joyce) from a young child to a young man.
-
-
Ulysses!
- By H. Metz on 11-16-19
By: James Joyce
-
The 99% Invisible City
- A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
- By: Kurt Kohlstedt, Roman Mars
- Narrated by: Roman Mars
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.
-
-
The 99% Invisible City
- By Louise Schraa on 01-09-21
By: Kurt Kohlstedt, and others
-
999
- The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz
- By: Heather Dune Macadam, Caroline Moorehead - foreword
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women - many of them teenagers - were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few survived.
-
-
I don’t think you can ever fully understand
- By Shelley on 02-25-20
By: Heather Dune Macadam, and others
-
Running for My Life
- One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
- By: Lopez Lomong
- Narrated by: Brandon Hirsch
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Running for My Life is not a story about Africa or track and field athletics. It is about outrunning the devil and achieving the impossible: faith, diligence, and the desire to give back. It is the American dream come true and a reminder that saving one can help to save thousands more. Lopez Lomong chronicles his inspiring ascent from a barefoot lost boy of the Sudanese Civil War to a Nike sponsored athlete on the US Olympic Team. Though most of us fall somewhere between the catastrophic lows and dizzying highs of Lomong's incredible life, every reader will find in his story the human spark to pursue dreams that might seem unthinkable.
-
-
Inspirational
- By Anonymous User on 05-17-19
By: Lopez Lomong
-
Consider This
- Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
-
-
Poetic Justice
- By Dave Green on 01-20-20
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
Children of the Land
- By: Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This unforgettable memoir from a prize-winning poet about growing up undocumented in the United States recounts the sorrows and joys of a family torn apart by draconian policies and chronicles one young man’s attempt to build a future in a nation that denies his existence. Children of the Land distills the trauma of displacement, illuminates the human lives behind the headlines, and serves as a stunning meditation on what it means to be a man and a citizen.
-
-
Phenomenal
- By Amelie on 07-18-20
-
Dubliners - A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - Ulysses
- By: James Joyce
- Narrated by: Tadhg Hynes
- Length: 47 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This compilation contains three of James Joyce's most important and recognisable works. Presented here in the order Joyce wrote them they provide an opportunity to enter his world from the comparatively shallow end of "Dubliners" to the deep end of "Ulysses". "Dubliners" contains 15 short stories in Joyce's intended sequence, each with its own moment of realisation or epiphany, ending with what is considered to be one of the finest short stories in literature, "The Dead". "Portrait" could be seen as the prelude to "Ulysses". It shows the growth of Stephen Dedalus (James Joyce) from a young child to a young man.
-
-
Ulysses!
- By H. Metz on 11-16-19
By: James Joyce
-
The 99% Invisible City
- A Field Guide to the Hidden World of Everyday Design
- By: Kurt Kohlstedt, Roman Mars
- Narrated by: Roman Mars
- Length: 10 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.
-
-
The 99% Invisible City
- By Louise Schraa on 01-09-21
By: Kurt Kohlstedt, and others
-
999
- The Extraordinary Young Women of the First Official Jewish Transport to Auschwitz
- By: Heather Dune Macadam, Caroline Moorehead - foreword
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 13 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On March 25, 1942, nearly a thousand young, unmarried Jewish women boarded a train in Poprad, Slovakia. Filled with a sense of adventure and national pride, they left their parents' homes wearing their best clothes and confidently waving good-bye. Believing they were going to work in a factory for a few months, they were eager to report for government service. Instead, the young women - many of them teenagers - were sent to Auschwitz. Their government paid 500 Reich Marks (about $200) apiece for Nazis to take them as slave labor. Of those 999 innocent deportees, only a few survived.
-
-
I don’t think you can ever fully understand
- By Shelley on 02-25-20
By: Heather Dune Macadam, and others
-
Running for My Life
- One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
- By: Lopez Lomong
- Narrated by: Brandon Hirsch
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Running for My Life is not a story about Africa or track and field athletics. It is about outrunning the devil and achieving the impossible: faith, diligence, and the desire to give back. It is the American dream come true and a reminder that saving one can help to save thousands more. Lopez Lomong chronicles his inspiring ascent from a barefoot lost boy of the Sudanese Civil War to a Nike sponsored athlete on the US Olympic Team. Though most of us fall somewhere between the catastrophic lows and dizzying highs of Lomong's incredible life, every reader will find in his story the human spark to pursue dreams that might seem unthinkable.
-
-
Inspirational
- By Anonymous User on 05-17-19
By: Lopez Lomong
-
Consider This
- Moments in My Writing Life After Which Everything Was Different
- By: Chuck Palahniuk
- Narrated by: Chuck Palahniuk, Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this spellbinding blend of memoir and insight, best-selling author Chuck Palahniuk shares stories and generous advice on what makes writing powerful and what makes for powerful writing. With advice grounded in years of careful study and a keenly observed life, Palahniuk combines practical advice and concrete examples from beloved classics, his own books, and a "kitchen-table MFA" culled from an evolving circle of beloved authors and artists, with anecdotes, postcards from the road, and much more.
-
-
Poetic Justice
- By Dave Green on 01-20-20
By: Chuck Palahniuk
-
Fossil Men
- The Quest for the Oldest Skeleton and the Origins of Humankind
- By: Kermit Pattison
- Narrated by: Roger Wayne
- Length: 15 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In 1994, a team led by fossil-hunting legend Tim White—"the Steve Jobs of paleoanthropology"—uncovered the bones of a human ancestor in Ethiopia's Afar region. The findings challenged many assumptions about human evolution and repudiated a half-century of paleoanthropological orthodoxy. An intriguing tale of scientific discovery, obsession and rivalry that moves from the sun-baked desert of Africa to modern high-tech labs and academic lecture halls, Fossil Men is popular science at its best, and a must-listen for fans of Jared Diamond, Richard Dawkins, and Edward O. Wilson.
-
-
Oh narrator
- By Paul on 01-21-21
By: Kermit Pattison
-
When We Were Young & Brave
- A Novel
- By: Hazel Gaynor
- Narrated by: Rosie Jones, Imogen Church
- Length: 11 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
China, December 1941. Having left an unhappy life in England for a teaching post at a missionary school in northern China, Elspeth Kent is now anxious to return home to help the war effort. But as she prepares to leave China, a terrible twist of fate determines a different path for Elspeth, and those in her charge. Ten-year-old Nancy Plummer has always felt safe at Chefoo School, protected by her British status.
-
-
heart wrenching And inspiring!!
- By Justin Drogoszewski on 11-22-20
By: Hazel Gaynor
-
Vanishing Fleece
- Adventures in American Wool
- By: Clara Parkes
- Narrated by: Clara Parkes
- Length: 5 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Join Clara Parkes on a cross-country adventure and meet a cast of characters that includes the shepherds, dyers, and countless workers without whom our knitting needles would be empty, our mills idle, and our feet woefully cold. Travel the country with her as she meets a flock of Saxon Merino sheep in upstate New York, tours a scouring plant in Texas, visits a steamy Maine dyehouse, helps sort freshly shorn wool on a working farm, and learns how wool fleece is measured, baled, shipped, and turned into skeins.
-
-
Great Book.
- By Josemiguel Gomez on 03-02-20
By: Clara Parkes
-
Stealing Home
- Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between
- By: Eric Nusbaum
- Narrated by: David Owen Nelson
- Length: 8 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dodger Stadium is an American icon. But the story of how it came to be goes far beyond baseball. The hills that cradle the stadium were once home to three vibrant Mexican American communities. In the early 1950s, those communities were condemned to make way for a utopian public housing project. Then, in a remarkable turn, public housing in the city was defeated amidst a Red Scare conspiracy.
-
-
Once Upon a Time at Dodger Stadium
- By James Gamble on 03-06-21
By: Eric Nusbaum
-
Lincoln on the Verge
- Thirteen Days to Washington
- By: Ted Widmer
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders, Ted Widmer
- Length: 16 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
As a divided nation plunges into the deepest crisis in its history, Abraham Lincoln boards a train for Washington and his inauguration - an inauguration Southerners have vowed to prevent by any means necessary. Drawing on new research, this account reveals the president-elect as a work in progress, showing him on the verge of greatness, foiling an assassination attempt, and forging an unbreakable bond with the American people.
-
-
A perfect listen for our divided times.
- By Jonathan W White on 12-06-20
By: Ted Widmer
-
Never Ask Me
- By: Jeff Abbott
- Narrated by: Erin Bennett, Will Collyer, Peter Giles, and others
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Each of us has a question we dread. When the simple community of Lakehaven is shaken by a violent crime, doubts begin to arise among the locals about whom they can trust.
-
-
Wow What a Roller Coaster!
- By DM Salazar on 07-17-20
By: Jeff Abbott
-
On Writers and Writing
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margaret Atwood
- Length: 6 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
What is the role of the writer? Prophet? High priest of art? Court jester? Or witness to the real world? Looking back on her own childhood and writing career, Margaret Atwood examines the metaphors which writers of fiction and poetry have used to explain - or excuse! - their activities, looking at what costumes they have assumed, what roles they have chosen to play. In her final chapter she takes up the challenge of the title: if a writer is to be seen as "gifted", who is doing the giving and what are the terms of the gift?
-
-
l just love Margaret Atwood.
- By Brandy Ringleb on 01-11-21
By: Margaret Atwood
-
They Went Left
- By: Monica Hesse
- Narrated by: Caitlin Davies
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Germany, 1945. The soldiers who liberated the Gross-Rosen concentration camp said the war was over, but nothing feels over to 18-year-old Zofia Lederman. Her body has barely begun to heal; her mind feels broken. And her life is completely shattered: Three years ago, she and her younger brother, Abek, were the only members of their family to be sent to the right, away from the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Everyone else - her parents, her grandmother, radiant Aunt Maja - they went left.
-
-
Heartbreakingly Beautiful
- By Willow Star Serenity on 04-10-20
By: Monica Hesse
-
Medical Apartheid
- The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present
- By: Harriet A. Washington
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 19 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Medical Apartheid is the first and only comprehensive history of medical experimentation on African Americans. Starting with the earliest encounters between black Americans and Western medical researchers and the racist pseudoscience that resulted, it details the ways both slaves and freedmen were used in hospitals for experiments conducted without their knowledge - a tradition that continues today within some black populations.
-
-
Sobering... but necessary.
- By Dr. Pepper on 10-27-16
-
Evicted
- Poverty and Profit in the American City
- By: Matthew Desmond
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this brilliant, heartbreaking book, Matthew Desmond takes us into the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee to tell the story of eight families on the edge. Arleen is a single mother trying to raise her two sons on the $20 a month she has left after paying for their rundown apartment. Scott is a gentle nurse consumed by a heroin addiction. Lamar, a man with no legs and a neighborhood full of boys to look after, tries to work his way out of debt. Vanetta participates in a botched stickup after her hours are cut.
-
-
Outstanding and eye-opening
- By serine on 11-29-16
By: Matthew Desmond
-
Between Two Kingdoms
- A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
- By: Suleika Jaouad
- Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad
- Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone. It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival.
-
-
Just ok--maybe not the audience for this...
- By NMwritergal on 02-21-21
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
Lost Connections
- Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions
- By: Johann Hari
- Narrated by: Johann Hari
- Length: 9 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the New York Times best-selling author of Chasing the Scream, a radically new way of thinking about depression and anxiety. What really causes depression and anxiety - and how can we really solve them?
-
-
lost loved ones to his beliefs be cautious .
- By John Doumar on 07-27-18
By: Johann Hari
Publisher's Summary
This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises).
What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.
In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots.
From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated.
Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.
Critic Reviews
“In Lightning Flowers, Katherine E. Standefer offers a full accounting of the cost of a single life, and it is nothing short of astonishing. She travels, literally, to both the brink of death and the edge of the world to discover exactly what it means to live. Her courage is palpable, on the page and in life. This book is utterly spectacular.” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and What We've Lost Is Nothing)
“Lightning Flowers is a quest for an answer to the most basic human question: what is a life worth? For a young American woman, kept alive by a hunk of metal in her chest, the answer is to be found in the African mines that produce titanium, cobalt, nickel...the precious metals used to make our essential microelectronics, including heart defibrillators. No trial in this quest can be avoided: heartbreak and debt, culture shock and corporate empire, medical indifference and poverty, trauma and mortality. There is an alchemy of tender magic and brute force in Standefer's writing; Lightning Flowers transports us into the heart of Africa - and the heart of a woman forced to question our global, racialized economy even as she identifies the raw materials that give her life.” (Ann Neumann, author of The Good Death)
“In her stunning debut, Katherine E. Standefer reveals how a single piece of supposedly lifesaving machinery has forever implicated her in ruinous global supply chains, how entire economies of extraction have come to reside deep within her body. With great clarity and resilience, Lightning Flowers invites us to become intimate with the moral and environmental calculus of our own lives.” (Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River)
What listeners say about Lightning Flowers
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- FSRasheed
- 11-19-20
Eye opening and heart wrenching
As a healthcare professional with a brother who is an electrophysiologist, I was intrigued to hear Katherine Standefer’s story as a glimpse into what my brother did for a living; What I got was so much more! As a physician myself, I am always in awe of what life is like “on the other side” for a patient and the impact things like the style in which physicians communicate make a difference in a patient’s life. So many times, my jaw dropped at how the author was left feeling after a physician did not make her feel like she was heard and how our medical system continues to fail patients in this way everyday. I was grateful that she brought to light the struggles getting healthcare is when one is not insured despite every effort to get insurance. There are so many parts to this story that brought me to tears and made me angry over our broken healthcare system that leaves pharmaceutical companies and hospital CEOs making millions and leaving patients and physicians struggling to be at the center of the story and the ability to be the best. In this book, I was able to hear her story loud and clear. We need to do better.
55 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- C. J. Ross
- 11-14-20
Author sounds like she’s telling the story, not just reading
A veteran of long commutes, I listen to a lot of audiobooks. I’ve found that having a good narrator is critical for me to enjoy an audiobook.
Authors reading their own books are pretty hit -or-miss. In this case, the author does a great job. She sounds like she’s telling the story, like it was written to be spoken out loud.
The story itself is fascinating. I think it’s important to see different experiences in modern healthcare. Framing it in view of her own critical heart condition and critically examining what goes into healthcare devices is captivating.
45 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- T. C. Banyai
- 01-09-21
I don't feel alone!
As an ICD person, whose device fired 12 time in 2019, I now feel that there is someone out there that is telling my story. Listening to every second of listening to Katherine's story made me feel that I was not alone. Also, her battle with the insurance and medical industry rang very familiar to me. Furthermore, I am grateful fo Katherine for her research into the intended and unintended environmental consequences of the manufacture of those devices
Thank you Katherine!
27 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Jessica L.
- 12-07-20
startlingly beautiful and raw
The author delivers her story with a raw, sweet tenderness. Part memoir, part medical exposé, part ecological and anthropological journey. Ms Standefer's performance is strong and intimate, immediate. A story and viewpoint that will stay with me a very long time.
21 people found this helpful
-
Overall
- walking
- 02-02-21
there but for the grace of god
our lives like the author/narrator can change on a dime. Ms. Standefer is a remarkable writer. I highly recommend this.
13 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Bentley S. Davis
- 12-01-20
recommended for all interested in healthcare
This beautifully written memoir should be required reading for those interested in healthcare. While the author goes into detail into what is involved in the making of her medical device, the parts about the patient/physician/payor relationship was what moved me the most.
12 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Laurie Easter
- 02-06-21
An amazing book!
A fascinating and deep dive into the author’s experience navigating a genetic heart condition, the healthcare system, and the global effects and ramifications of mining the minerals needed to create lifesaving heart devices. Personal, extremely well researched and written, and pleasantly narrated by the author.
11 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 12-08-20
Must read
This book is compelling and a must read for anyone interested in Health policy and healthcare and anyone with a heart
9 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stephen
- 03-18-21
A good story lost
First off I feel for this young lady as I have a family friend that discovered this genetic issue in 2 of her 3 daughters so it hit close to home after watching their struggles. But, the description of the book was misleading. I was intrigued by her quest and cause. It quickly turned into her admitted personal choices and financial decisions leading her to need to find unique ways to seek and finance treatment in spite of her upbringing and teaching.
Her journey to discovering the costs to humanity and the Earth for her to live was fascinating but unfortunately a small part of the book. Her struggles are real but false in their origins.
When she belittles a man's financial issues with the changes in insurance that hurt his financial planning it was over the top. She took pride in trying to humiliate him! She admits the insurance plan from a prior administration is broken but she will keep it as long as it benefits her!
Basically this could have been a fantastic investigative piece that shows the damage we are all willing to live with so long as our life is better. She lost her point by getting lost in the muck of politics and blame. The book was not about the cost of saving a life, it was about her lack of listening to doctors, her family and any constructive advice. She attempts to redeem herself by going on a mission around the globe to point out what others are doing wrong.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sally Davis
- 03-25-21
Immature whining
Chooses to have a job near Jackson Hole, WY as a young adult with no health insurance. Lives her life running an outdoor business on public lands. Then cons the system in Colorado, pretending to be a resident to get coverage. Apparently financial planning for life was not important to her. Glad she’s found a way to earn a living, perhaps she could pay back Colorado for her surgery. Perhaps help support public lands in Wyoming that she loves so much. Couldn’t finish this book, way too disgusted with her.
5 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Daisy
- 03-17-21
Brave and important book
The author is a fantastic writer, who writes creatively and beautifully about a difficult experience and important topic. At times the link between the defibrillator and the mining industry seems tenuous or perhaps it is an important link but she could be more analytical of how the experience of having a foreign object in her chest fuelled her obsession with its earthly origin.