A remarkable collection of diary entries from cross-genre Portuguese author Maria Gabriela Llansol, which span dozens of diaries and 33 years."She dedicated herself to this work regularly, at the same time, in the same place, and in almost the same position…” (The Book of Communities).Over the course of her life, Maria Gabriela Llansol wrote many thousands of pages. She left behind 70 diaries in all, which began in November 1974 and contin...

A major discovery, with echoes of Clarice Lispector, Llansol's groundbreaking linked novellas present her unique literary vision of writing as lived life, conjuring historical figures and their ideas into her world. "I live what I have written (and what I have yet to write), as posthumous work. Its longevity will outlive mine. It will have to exist by itself."

Do sleek high-tech hospitals teach more about medicine and less about humanity? Do doctors ever lose their tolerance for suffering? With sensitive observation and graceful prose, this book explores some of the difficult and deeply personal questions a 23-year-old doctor confronts with her very first dying patient, and continues to struggle with as she strives to become a good doctor. In her travels, the doctor attends to terminal illness, AIDS, tuberculosis, and premature birth in small ru...

Jodi Picoult meets Atul Gawande in this gripping medical drama that plunges readers into the hidden pressures of the operating room and the emotional fallout of failure, guilt, and ambition from the bestselling author of Gemini and Healer.Dr. Marie Heaton is an anesthesiologist at the height of her profession. She has worked, lived, and breathed her career since medical school, and she now practices at a top Seattle hospital. Mari...

This book is a collection of my all-time favorite stories from working with patients as a medical professional over the past seventeen years. I have witnessed and been a part of some amazing experiences ranging from hilarious to shocking to just plain disgusting. I've told these stories many times at family gatherings, parties, and in conversations with friends. After much encouragement, I took the time to write them down before they became distant memories. Each chapter of this book is de...

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...

If Atul Gawande were funny--or Jerome Groopman were a working mother--they might sound something like Michelle Au, M.D., author of this hilarious and poignant memoir of a medical residency.Michelle Au started medical school armed only with a surfeit of idealism, a handful of old ER episodes for reference, and some vague notion about "helping people."This Won't Hurt a Bit is the story of how she grew up and became a real doctor.It's a no-hol...

Have you ever wondered what it feels like:to be stuck in a tornado?“[It] is exactly the feel of a freight train approaching—that low, ever-louder howl and the shuddering ground.”to participate in an orgy?“And all the while, the thought that keeps going through your mind (and through the cab ride home, and into breakfast the next day): ‘I’m at an orgy! I’m at an orgy!’”to have a severe stutter?

When Dr. Meghan Weir first dons her scrubs and steps onto the floor of Children’s Hospital Boston as a newly minted resident, her head is packed with medical-school-textbook learning. She knows the ins and outs of the human body, has memorized the correct way to perform hundreds of complicated procedures, and can recite the symptoms of any number of diseases by rote. But none of that has truly prepared her for what she is about to experience.From the premature infa...

A young doctor gets caught up with the wrong woman and races to save lives and his career in this debut medical thriller.In a sleepy, small-town Arizona hospital, a thirteen-year-old boy lies in a coma after inexplicably suffering a cardiac arrest. His doctors are perplexed. Although emotionally disturbed Henry Rojelio was a frequent visitor to the emergency room—often for bouts of asthma, but usually just for attention—no one ever anticipated a battle with death.

If stories are medicine, then this collection will help keep hopes up and spirits alive on the road to recovery. Readers will applaud the bravery of 50 exceptional survivors as they tell their unique experiences with breast cancer. Every breast cancer survivor has a different story, but they all have one thing in common: courage. From dealing with diagnosis to undergoing chemotherapy, facing hair loss and possibly the loss of a breast, these fearless women undergo more than anyone ever sho...

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