Americans have long been fascinated by the personal lives of Hollywood celebrities and the over-hyped magic of plastic surgery. In this entertaining memoir, Dr. Norman Leaf, a highly respected plastic surgeon, reveals the complex and all-too-human connection that exists between these two worlds. In his thirty-five years practicing in Beverly Hills, California, Leaf has encountered the great and those aspiring to be great, seeing them in a different light than the general public. This uniqu...

When I mention that I work in an emergency room, people usually say,Are you a nurse?Wow. That must be really hard.What's it like?This is what it's like to be an emergency doctor.That teenager puking up two liters of vodka and his stomach lining at triage? Yup. Blood pouring out of a terrified pregnant woman? Call me. And, of course, the patient who no longer has a nosebleed screaming at me across the depart...

The inspiration for the major motion picture starring Jim Parson****s—now streaming on Netflix! A “heartbreaking but surprisingly hilarious memoir” (People) about the lessons, love, and laughter of the fourteen years a respected TV columnist shared with his late husband before he succumbed to cancer.For over a decade, TV fans have counted upon Michael Ausiello’s insider knowledge to get the scoop on their favorite shows and stars. From his time at Soap...

To be a good nurse takes dedication, perseverance and patience.We are there to take care of the sick and nurture them back to good health.So what would you say to a little old man who asks you to squeeze his banana?Would you take him up on his offer?I would say, Let me have it.By the way, he only wants it peeled!It is questions like that, that are not that unusual coming from the patients that I care for everyday and some questions get much more creative, if you know what I mean?It...

When every hiccup sounds like the call of doom, each stomach pang hints at incipient cancer, and a headache means it's time to firm up your last will and testament, The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. provides just the relief you need. Gene Weingarten has spent his whole life immersed in the eclectic details of bizarre symptoms, self-diagnosing every minor ache as a potentially deadly disease. Weingarten examines:The mind of a hypochondriac

I'm baaaaack.That's right. You can't keep the most unfeeling doctor in the world away.Was I always such a hard-hearted lass? Of course not. I offer you some counter-examples from medical school, a time when I was so earnest and hard-working, I scraped my finger on the mannequin while practicing my digital rectal exam technique (true story).Then I bring it into real time, swapping stories about the emergency room in the digital age, where Twitter co-exists with traum...

A memoir of reinvention after a stroke at age thirty-three.Christine Hyung-Oak Lee woke up with a headache on the morning of December 31, 2006. By that afternoon, she saw the world—quite literally—upside down. By New Year's Day, she was unable to form a coherent sentence. And after hours in the ER, days in the hospital, and multiple questions and tests, her doctors informed her that she had had a stroke.For months afterward, Lee outsourced her memories to a journal, taking ...

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Say Goodbye to Back Pain! is full of inspirational stories and practical medical information and advice. This new book with Harvard Medical School will help readers with back pain, whether it is occasional or chronic.Almost everyone experiences back pain at some point in their lives. Many people suffer far more than they need to and are looking for help. This book offers that help, combining inspiring and comforting Chicken Soup ...

“As wise as it is well written. . . . A sustaining work of art.” —Linda Elisabeth Beattie, Courier-JournalIn this inspired anthology, doctors relate true stories from their professional lives, capturing disillusionments and triumphs encountered along the way. Essays by such distinguished writers as Peter D. Kramer, Kay Redfield Jamison, Danielle Ofri, Robert Coles, Lauren Slater, Sandeep Jauhar, and Perri Klass create a vivid mural of the medical world, from a student’s un...

Go behind the scenes of the OR in this "fact-filled, poignant, and funny" account by an anesthesiologist ( Booklist).Even patients who've spent time in the operating room don't really know much about them—thanks to the important work of anesthesiologists like Dr. Paul Whang. But here, he takes readers into the hospital and past the OR doors—fully alert.Combining personal stories with staff experiences, he reveals hidden truths about what goes on du...

Are women ruining medicine? Nah.Real life in the emergency lane, zeroing on body parts and chicks in scrubs.Just like Grey’s Anatomy, medicine with a little bit of sex.And, like Fifty Shades of Grey, a tiny bit of torture.

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 “