Diversity plays an important role in how people experience illness and healthcare as patients. Listening carefully to stories of how race, class, age, gender, sexuality, and disability can affect patient experience can be revealing and provide much needed change to health communication in the patienthood narrative. This book is a collection of vibrant and engaging essays by scholars of narrative methods in health communication. Each chapter takes readers into the fascinating world of patie...

Cancer: The Unexpected Giftis a compilation of stories that profile individuals and families who have taken a frightening medical diagnosis and turned it into a positive gift.Medical oncologist Dr. J. Patrick Daugherty is familiar with many who are living well while living longer. Together with three-time cancer survivor Edie Hand, they share inspiring personal anecdotes from individuals who openly express the doubts, fears, perplexities, and positive refle...

WEAVING MEDICAL NARRATIVE AND CUTTING-EDGE SCIENCE, DR. MIMI GUARNERI EXPLORES THE FRONTIERS BEYOND THE PHYSICAL HEART.Every day, 2,600 Americans die of cardiovascular disease -- one person every thirty-three seconds. Ten times more women die of heart disease than breast cancer. Despite remarkable interventional and surgical procedures, over 650,000 new heart attacks occur annually. With groundbreaking new research, Dr. Guarneri skillfully blends the science and drama of the heart'...

An inspiring and profoundly enlightening exploration of one doctor’s discovery of how hope can changethe course of illnessSince the time of the ancient Greeks, human beings have believed that hope is essential to life. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Harvard Medical School professor and New Yorker staff writer Jerome Groopman shows us why.The search for hope is most urgent at the patient’s bedside. The Anatomy of Hope takes us there, bring...

As women quickly discover, their life when treatment ends is very different from what it was before their diagnosis. Often exhausted, anxious, and emotionally volatile, they are beset by physical discomforts, fearful of intimacy, afraid for their children, worried about recurrence. Anticipating a return to “normalcy,” they discover that the old version of normal no longer applies.There could be no more knowledgeable guide for women embarking on this complicated journey than Hester ...

A unique, must-have resource with medical information, practical tips, psychological insight, and coping strategies to help men help the women they love through the challenges of breast cancer“With a wonderful blend of empathy, humor, and information, Breast Cancer Husband is a buddy and an on-call support group for men who love women with breast cancer.”—Hester Hill Schnipper, oncology social worker and author of After Breast Cancer

For readers of Being Mortal and Modern Death, an ICU and Palliative Care specialist offers a framework for a better way to exit life that will change our medical culture at the deepest levelIn medical school, no one teaches you how to let a patient die.Jessica Zitter became a doctor because she wanted to be a hero. She elected to specialize in critical care—to become an ICU physician—and imagined herself swooping in to rescue patients from...

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Hope & Healing for Your Breast Cancer Journey will encourage comfort and encourage breast cancer patients and survivors with its inspiring stories and helpful medical information.A support group from breast cancer diagnosis through treatment to rehabilitation and recovery, this book combines inspiring Chicken Soup for the Soul stories written just for this book and accessible leading-edge medical information from Dr. Julie Silver...

THIS IS THE NOW. I am still here. Call me blessed. Call me determined. And yes, call me very grateful. Now call me a writerbecause I need to share my story.I have been diagnosed with the fifth most common cancer killer of women: ovarian cancer. I have broken through to a brighter time. My mission now is to increase the likelihood that many more stricken-women, may also live beyond the onset, diagnosis, and treatment of ovarian cancer.This book begins with my story of being he...

Understanding the secret code of illness and healthMany doctors overlook the seemingly inexplicable tragedies and recoveries that happen in hospitals every day, opting to view them simply as aberrations from the medical norm. In this book, Dr. Marc Siegel draws from his decades of experience treating patients and explores the sometimes miraculous effects that the spirit and emotion can have on disease and healing. The inner pulse is the essence that links the soul ...

Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster shows you how to use mind-body techniques to reduce anxiety, use 23-50% less pain medication and heal faster. Documented by research, it is recommended at leading hospitals across the US, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital which is a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital and NYU Langone Medical Center in New York.It includes chapters about using relaxation and visualization to reduce anxiety and speed healing. Feeling peaceful creates the biochemistr...

Learn how the mind shapes the body, and take charge of your health and wellness with the science and power of belief.In this life-changing book, Dr. Herbert Benson draws on his twenty-five years as a physician and researcher to reveal how affirming beliefs, particularly belief in a higher power, make an important contribution to our physical health. We are not simply nourished by meditation and prayer, but are, in essence, "wired for God."Combining the wisd...