Sean Conroy started his career in the lab, but had a burning desire to enter the clinical side of medicine as a physician assistant. After completing the first two years of book work, he spent a year learning from doctors, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and others on the front lines of medicine in hospitals and clinics across the state of Nebraska. He entered his first family practice rotation as a well-spoken but inexperienced PA student, and in under a year was bedside with s...

Stories of baffling symptoms and elusive diagnoses from the front lines of medicine that are “like a real-life episode of House” (Publishers Weekly).“Vital Signs,” a popular column featured in Discover magazine, has long been a favorite of readers, showcasing fascinating new tales of strange illnesses and diseases that baffle doctors and elude diagnosis. Each tale is true and borders on the unbelievable. It’s no wonder that throughout the...

Rocky Lang and Dr. Erick Montero offer up more than 200 firsthand accounts of emergency room dramas along with bizarre and insightful medical facts and stats inside Confessions of Emergency Room Doctors. Sample entries include:* Strange Disease Fact: A melcryptovestimentaphilliac is someone who compulsively steals ladies underwear.* Dr. Brown, Chicago Hospital, writes: "A woman came into the ER, ready to give birth, followed by her husband and about ten kids. Their...

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 like waking up in a foreign country. Life, as you formerly knew it, is on hold while you travel through this other world as unknown as it is unexpected. When...

The ABC medical drama Grey’s Anatomy has generated a flurry of interest in how medical professionals really make it through one of the most rigorous educational programs around, but how much of the medical drama seen in Grey’s Anatomy is pure entertainment, and how much is an accurate reflection of life both in and out of the OR?In The Real Grey's Anatomy, a well-known medical journalist provides some answers. He examines a group of new s...

Long before the hit TV show E.R., emergency room doctor Mark Brown decided that the world just had to know about real life in a hospital's E.R.The emergency room is a cauldron of human emotions. The anguish, fear, need, and gore is wearing. As the protective layer of the self is weakened, the pain seeps through and begins to stain the soul. The protective layer grows thicker. But the patients’ needs call out to a sensitive heart, and a balance is struck. Surviv...

Forensic pathologist Janis Amatuzio has performed thousands of autopsies. She chose her line of work in part because it allowed her to help unravel the mystery of each person’s death. She found that by listening and talking to the loved ones of the deceased, she could offer them some sense of closure. In the course of her work, she has heard extraordinary stories from grieving loved ones, patients near death, police officers, clergy members, and colleagues — stories of spiritual and otherw...

Living with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) for over 50 Years: A Diagnosis after 25 Years, is an autobiography of Laurice B. Karrell. This book, which is divided into decades, delineates her multiple sclerosis (MS) exacerbations beginning with her first major symptom in 1958. It then goes on to describe her futile search over many years for a diagnosis. It finally culminates with a diagnosis twenty-five years later when sophisticated medical equipment becomes available. This book is intended for b...

True Tales of the ridiculous, the silly, and the just plain weird cases doctors face—lampooning the medical bureaucracy that makes practicing medicine and getting medical care such a headache.Doctors have a sick sense of humor. This is the deep, dark, and hilarious secret of the medical profession revealed by the irreverent Dr. Douglas Farrago in his popular satirical magazine, Placebo Journal—affectionately known by its thousands of fanatic readers as “

Can a body turn against itself and still find the strength to laugh?At just seven years old, Brenda Currey Lewis was an active, typical child. But in the summer of 1974, her trajectory changed forever when a sudden, baffling neurological invader took hold of her muscles. Diagnosed with generalized dystonia—a rare and debilitating movement disorder that forces muscle groups to twist, tug, and lock the body into abnormal postures—Brenda was wheelchair-bound within a single year. For ...

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A person without a functioning liver will die. Until a mere 30 years ago, there was no solution for millions suffering from many forms of liver disease, one of which is Hepatitis C, The Silent Killer. The Solution? Transplantation. LIVER TRANSPLANT: MY STORY describes my experience from the first moment of realization that my liver was diseased through to the pre-transplant, actual transplant, and post-transplant periods. It makes clear what the body is going through and what it will go th...