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...

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?

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.

New York Times WellBlog regular contributor, Danielle Ofri has been praised for turning the triumphs and trials of medicine into riveting and compassionate stories. This e-book exclusive edition offers 98 pages of her best work.This eBook original exhibits Danielle Ofri's range and skill as a storyteller as well as her empathy and astuteness as a doctor. Her vivid prose brings the reader into bustling hospitals, tense exam rooms, and Ofri's own life, givin...

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...

“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...