-
When Blood Breaks Down
- Life Lessons from Leukemia
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Categories: Biographies & Memoirs, Professionals & Academics
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Audible Premium Plus
$14.95 a month
Buy for $17.49
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
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. Between Two Kingdoms is a searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission and, ultimately, a road trip of healing and self-discovery.
-
-
So incredibly inspiring...
- By Amanda on 02-13-21
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
Regenesis
- How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
- By: George M. Church, Ed Regis
- Narrated by: Peter Lerman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies - far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction - have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span.
-
-
Brilliant! But please update!
- By Nick on 01-28-21
By: George M. Church, and others
-
A Time for All Things
- The Life of Michael E. DeBakey
- By: Craig A. Miller
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 25 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He has been called the greatest surgeon of the 20th century. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey rose from humble beginnings in a backwater Louisiana town to dominate the landscape of modern medicine. His contributions to our understanding and treatment of cardiovascular disease, in particular, were innumerable and epoch-making. DeBakey led a life of high drama, from the streets of Jazz Age New Orleans and the operating theaters of pre-war Europe, to the battlefields of World War II and the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.
-
-
Very informative
- By Paal Skjetne on 09-26-20
By: Craig A. Miller
-
Biology: The Science of Life
- By: Stephen Nowicki, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Stephen Nowicki
- Length: 36 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the greatest scientific feats of our era is the astonishing progress made in understanding biology-the intricate machinery of life-a progress to which the period we are living in right now has contributed the most.As you read these words, researchers are delving ever deeper into the workings of living systems, turning their discoveries into new medical treatments, improved methods of growing food, and innovative products that are already changing the world.
-
-
Great for starters to biology
- By Eran on 07-11-13
By: Stephen Nowicki, and others
-
Incognito
- The Secret Lives of the Brain
- By: David Eagleman
- Narrated by: David Eagleman
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sparkling and provocative new book, the renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising mysteries. Taking in brain damage, plane spotting, dating, drugs, beauty, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence, and visual illusions, Incognito is a thrilling subsurface exploration of the mind and all its contradictions.
-
-
Interesting Take....
- By Douglas on 10-30-13
By: David Eagleman
-
This Is Going to Hurt
- Secret Diaries of a Medical Resident
- By: Adam Kay
- Narrated by: Adam Kay
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights, and missed weekends, comedian and former medical resident Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine.
-
-
Superb.
- By TracyO on 12-12-19
By: Adam Kay
-
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. Between Two Kingdoms is a searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission and, ultimately, a road trip of healing and self-discovery.
-
-
So incredibly inspiring...
- By Amanda on 02-13-21
By: Suleika Jaouad
-
Regenesis
- How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves
- By: George M. Church, Ed Regis
- Narrated by: Peter Lerman
- Length: 10 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Regenesis, George Church and science writer Ed Regis explore the possibilities of the emerging field of synthetic biology. Synthetic biology, in which living organisms are selectively altered by modifying substantial portions of their genomes, allows for the creation of entirely new species of organisms. These technologies - far from the out-of-control nightmare depicted in science fiction - have the power to improve human and animal health, increase our intelligence, enhance our memory, and even extend our life span.
-
-
Brilliant! But please update!
- By Nick on 01-28-21
By: George M. Church, and others
-
A Time for All Things
- The Life of Michael E. DeBakey
- By: Craig A. Miller
- Narrated by: Eric Jason Martin
- Length: 25 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
He has been called the greatest surgeon of the 20th century. The son of Lebanese immigrants, Michael DeBakey rose from humble beginnings in a backwater Louisiana town to dominate the landscape of modern medicine. His contributions to our understanding and treatment of cardiovascular disease, in particular, were innumerable and epoch-making. DeBakey led a life of high drama, from the streets of Jazz Age New Orleans and the operating theaters of pre-war Europe, to the battlefields of World War II and the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina.
-
-
Very informative
- By Paal Skjetne on 09-26-20
By: Craig A. Miller
-
Biology: The Science of Life
- By: Stephen Nowicki, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: Stephen Nowicki
- Length: 36 hrs and 38 mins
- Original Recording
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
One of the greatest scientific feats of our era is the astonishing progress made in understanding biology-the intricate machinery of life-a progress to which the period we are living in right now has contributed the most.As you read these words, researchers are delving ever deeper into the workings of living systems, turning their discoveries into new medical treatments, improved methods of growing food, and innovative products that are already changing the world.
-
-
Great for starters to biology
- By Eran on 07-11-13
By: Stephen Nowicki, and others
-
Incognito
- The Secret Lives of the Brain
- By: David Eagleman
- Narrated by: David Eagleman
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this sparkling and provocative new book, the renowned neuroscientist David Eagleman navigates the depths of the subconscious brain to illuminate surprising mysteries. Taking in brain damage, plane spotting, dating, drugs, beauty, infidelity, synesthesia, criminal law, artificial intelligence, and visual illusions, Incognito is a thrilling subsurface exploration of the mind and all its contradictions.
-
-
Interesting Take....
- By Douglas on 10-30-13
By: David Eagleman
-
This Is Going to Hurt
- Secret Diaries of a Medical Resident
- By: Adam Kay
- Narrated by: Adam Kay
- Length: 5 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships. Welcome to the life of a first-year doctor. Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights, and missed weekends, comedian and former medical resident Adam Kay's This Is Going to Hurt provides a no-holds-barred account of his time on the front lines of medicine.
-
-
Superb.
- By TracyO on 12-12-19
By: Adam Kay
-
In Shock
- My Journey from Death to Recovery and the Redemptive Power of Hope
- By: Dr. Rana Awdish
- Narrated by: Dr. Rana Awdish, Teri Schnaubelt
- Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.
-
-
Read this book!
- By CT on 11-08-17
By: Dr. Rana Awdish
-
Gut
- The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ
- By: Giulia Enders
- Narrated by: Katy Sobey
- Length: 7 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Our gut is almost as important to us as our brain, yet we know very little about how it works. Gut: The Inside Story is an entertaining, informative tour of the digestive system from the moment we raise a tasty morsel to our lips until the moment our body surrenders the remnants to the toilet bowl. No topic is too lowly for the author's wonder and admiration, from the careful choreography of breaking wind to the precise internal communication required for a cleansing vomit.
-
-
Doctors opinion
- By KevinM9082 on 03-02-17
By: Giulia Enders
-
Deep Medicine
- How Artificial Intelligence Can Make Healthcare Human Again
- By: Eric Topol
- Narrated by: Graham Winton
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Medicine has become inhuman, to disastrous effect. The doctor-patient relationship - the heart of medicine - is broken: doctors are too distracted and overwhelmed to truly connect with their patients, and medical errors and misdiagnoses abound. In Deep Medicine, leading physician Eric Topol reveals how artificial intelligence can help. AI has the potential to transform everything doctors do, from notetaking and medical scans to diagnosis and treatment, greatly cutting down the cost of medicine and reducing human mortality.
-
-
A Terrific journey in to most pertinent aspects and future of medicine
- By Kiku on 04-25-19
By: Eric Topol
-
The Impostors
- How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics
- By: Steve Benen
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For decades, American voters innocently assumed the two major political parties were equally mature and responsible governing entities, ideological differences aside. That belief is due for an overhaul: In recent years, the Republican Party has undergone an astonishing metamorphosis, one so baffling and complete that few have fully reckoned with the reality and its consequences. Republicans, simply put, have quit governing. As MSNBC's Steve Benen charts in his groundbreaking new book, the contemporary GOP has become a "post-policy party".
-
-
Three Card Monte Politics
- By J.B. on 06-19-20
By: Steve Benen
-
Behave
- The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
- By: Robert M. Sapolsky
- Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
- Length: 26 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why do we do the things we do? More than a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful, but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs and then hops back in time from there in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
-
-
Insightful
- By Doug Hay on 07-27-17
-
Being Mortal
- Medicine and What Matters in the End
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
-
-
Required Reading!
- By Jeffrey on 10-13-14
By: Atul Gawande
-
And the Band Played On
- Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic
- By: Randy Shilts
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 31 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By the time Rock Hudson's death in 1985 alerted all America to the danger of the AIDS epidemic, the disease had spread across the nation, killing thousands of people and emerging as the greatest health crisis of the 20th century. America faced a troubling question: What happened? How was this epidemic allowed to spread so far before it was taken seriously?
-
-
The subtitle says it all!
- By Jan Mitchell Johnson on 03-19-13
By: Randy Shilts
-
College Level Anatomy and Physiology
- By: AudioLearn Content Team
- Narrated by: Lisa Stroth
- Length: 15 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The audio is focused and high-yield, covering the most important topics you might expect to learn in a typical undergraduate anatomy and physiology course. The material is accurate, up-to-date, and broken down into bite-sized chapters. There are key takeaways following each chapter to drive home key points and quizzes to review commonly tested questions.
-
-
PDF
- By California on 07-09-19
-
The Checklist Manifesto
- How to Get Things Right
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: John Bedford Lloyd
- Length: 6 hrs and 9 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world of great and increasing complexity, where even the most expert professionals struggle to master the tasks they face. Longer training, ever more advanced technologies - neither seems to prevent grievous errors. But in a hopeful turn, acclaimed surgeon and writer Atul Gawande finds a remedy in the humblest and simplest of techniques: the checklist.
-
-
Riveting!
- By Tad Davis on 01-11-10
By: Atul Gawande
-
Chasing My Cure
- A Doctor's Race to Turn Hope into Action; A Memoir
- By: David Fajgenbaum
- Narrated by: David Fajgenbaum
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
David Fajgenbaum, a former Georgetown quarterback, was nicknamed the Beast in medical school, where he was also known for his unmatched mental stamina. But things changed dramatically when he began suffering from inexplicable fatigue. In a matter of weeks, his organs were failing and he was read his last rites. Doctors were baffled by his condition, which they had yet to even diagnose. Floating in and out of consciousness, Fajgenbaum prayed for a second chance, the equivalent of a dramatic play to second the game into overtime.
-
-
Could have been far better
- By Booklover on 09-13-20
By: David Fajgenbaum
-
The Next Pandemic
- On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers
- By: Ali Khan, William Patrick
- Narrated by: Ben Sullivan
- Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases - and the panic and corruption that make them worse. The Next Pandemic is a firsthand account of disasters like anthrax, bird flu, and others - and how we could do more to prevent their return. It is both a gripping story of our brushes with fate and an urgent lesson on how we can keep ourselves safe from the inevitable next pandemic.
-
-
Many Outstanding Stories about Many Scary Microbes
- By aaron on 01-24-17
By: Ali Khan, and others
-
An Elegant Defense
- The Extraordinary New Science of the Immune System: A Tale in Four Lives
- By: Matt Richtel
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 12 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A magnificently reported and soulfully crafted exploration of the human immune system - the key to health and wellness, life and death. An epic, first-of-its-kind audiobook, entwining leading-edge scientific discovery with the intimate stories of four individual lives, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist.
-
-
Thoroughly researched
- By Dayle on 06-23-19
By: Matt Richtel
Publisher's Summary
When you are told that you have leukemia, your world stops. Your brain can't function. You are asked to make decisions about treatment almost immediately, when you are not in your right mind. And yet you pull yourself together and start asking questions. Beside you is your doctor, whose job it is to solve the awful puzzle of bone marrow gone wrong. The two of you are in it together. In When Blood Breaks Down, Mikkael Sekeres, a leading cancer specialist, takes listeners on the journey that patient and doctor travel together.
Sekeres tells the compelling stories of three people who receive diagnoses of adult leukemia within hours of each other: Joan, a 48-year-old surgical nurse, a caregiver who becomes a patient; David, a 68-year-old former factory worker who bows to his family's wishes and pursues the most aggressive treatment; and Sarah, a 36-year-old pregnant woman who must decide whether to undergo chemotherapy and put her fetus at risk. We join the intimacy of the conversations Sekeres has with his patients, and watch as he teaches trainees. Along the way, Sekeres also explores leukemia in its different forms and the development of drugs to treat it - describing, among many other fascinating details, the invention of the bone marrow transplant and a treatment that targets the genetics of leukemia.
More from the same
What listeners say about When Blood Breaks Down
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Georgia Lady
- 12-29-20
Excellent book for leukemia patients
This caring physician’s perspective is wonderful to hear. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and will recommend it to other CML patients.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Gretchen Harwood
- 09-08-20
Great book!
This was fascinating- to hear the stories/journeys of 3 different patients, each w/ a different type of leukemia. Woven in are the historical background of the treatments & advances. And growing up in a Cleveland suburb, it was fun to hear bits & pieces of northern Ohio. Great narration too! Highly recommend!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chris Larkin
- 07-13-20
Very interesting and informative
Excellent book for anyone who wants to learn about leukemia or those who want an inside view of a hematologist's daily life.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story

- Amazon Customer
- 11-17-20
Informative and highly relatable read!
Great narrative for those who have been recently diagnosed with leukemia. It gives a brief insight on what leukemia diagnosed patients face, challenges and treatment options. It also answers questions only a hematologist or a fellow leukemia sufferer can understand.
The reading is also well paced and emotive at the right places.