Showing titles in Medical

Writer and political activist Mike Marqusee was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer, in the summer of 2007. At first, disinclined to share his misery with others, he was reluctant to write about his illness. But he then came to realize that doing so provided a precious continuity with his life as a writer before contracting the disease, and a way of reaching out to a wider world that the illness made physically less accessible.

In this sequel to Silent Siren: Memoirs of a Lifesaving Mortician, ride along with mortuary removal technician Matthew Franklin Sias as he cares for the deceased in rural Washington State. Step into the hidden world of death care and explore the challenge of removing the deceased from the often-difficult, regularly awkward, and sometimes downright bizarre circumstances in which they die, the art and science of embalming, and the intrigue of forensic pathology.  

What really happens behind the doors of domiciliary care? After seven years working on the frontline, the author has learned that care rarely goes to plan. Care plans look neat on a screen, rotas are carefully timed, and calls are often described as “easy” but reality is far messier, louder, and funnier than the paperwork suggests. From missing information and unexpected situations to smells that change you as a person and cups of tea that are never quite finished, Care Plans, Chaos & Cold Tea offers an honest, humorous look at life as a care worker.

National Bestseller Winner of the 2017 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction Shortlisted for the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize Shortlisted for the 2018 Trillium Book Award Shortlisted for the 2018 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction Longlisted for the 2018 B.C. National Award for...

We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet - a few innovations notwithstanding - a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was 50 years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must. 

Growing up in Yorkshire and with farming blood in his genes, James Greenwood always knew he would end up as a vet. Animals have been part of James' life for as long as he can remember, from pulling lambs on a hilltop farm as a child and having stick insects crawling out of his school uniform in class, to renting a flat behind a zoo in Jersey and finding himself treating a newborn baby elephant as a newly qualified vet.

Recalling remarkable cases - and people - from a career launched in the first days of Emergency Medicine, Dr. Paul Seward leads us in his memoir through suspenseful diagnoses and explorations of anatomy. Within the conditions of great stress and rapid decision-making that are routine in the ER, Dr. Seward tells us that medical staff must be more than technicians of the body: They must be restorers of the human.

On July 1, 1959, at Ypsilanti State Hospital in Michigan, the social psychologist Milton Rokeach brought together three paranoid schizophrenics: Clyde Benson, an elderly farmer and alcoholic; Joseph Cassel, a failed writer who was institutionalized after increasingly violent behavior toward his family; and Leon Gabor, a college dropout and veteran of World War II. The men had one thing in common: each believed himself to be Jesus Christ.

In 1967, Jim Purtell left his small Midwestern town to join the US Army. He did so at a time when the country was pro-Vietnam and serving seemed an honorable thing to do. Little did he know that the tide would turn a mere six months later as drastically as it did. Vietnam—There & Back: A...

Cystic fibrosis was once a mysterious disease that killed infants and children. Now it could be the key to healing millions with genetic diseases of every type - from Alzheimer's and Parkinson's to diabetes and sickle cell anemia. Told from the perspectives of the patients, families, physicians, scientists, and philanthropists fighting on the front lines, Breath from Salt is a remarkable story of unlikely scientific and medical firsts, of setbacks and successes, and of people who refused to give up hope....

Marie Skłodowska Curie’s name is etched into the history of science as a pioneer, a groundbreaker, and an enduring symbol of perseverance. Born in Warsaw in 1867 under Russian occupation, she rose from modest beginnings to become one of the most celebrated scientists of all time. Her life story is not only about brilliant discoveries—it is also about overcoming barriers of gender, nationality, and circumstance with unwavering determination.

‘Gripping … so powerfully emotional that at times I had to put it down to wipe my eyes’ Mail on Sunday ‘How do you say thank you to someone for giving you their heart? It is the greatest gift a person can ever give.’ Marc is a promising young footballers of 15, growing up in Scotland...

The first full-length biography of the Civil War surgeon who, over the course of the war’s bloodiest battles - from Antietam to Gettysburg - redefined military medicine.

Jonathan Letterman was an outpost medical officer serving in Indian country in the years before the Civil War, responsible for the care of just hundreds of men. But when he was appointed the chief medical officer for the Army of the Potomac, he revolutionized combat medicine over the course of four major battles - Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg - that produced unprecedented numbers of casualties.

It begins with numbness on her left leg. Then it spreads. Even though an MRI finds a "mass" on her brainstem, it takes two more years for Meredith O'Brien to learn what is causing that numbness. Months after her sixty-five-year-old mother dies from a fast-moving cancer, weeks after her father is hospitalized and she experiences an unexpected job change, she learns she has multiple sclerosis. Suddenly, Meredith, a married mother of three teens, has to figure out how to move forward into a life she no longer recognizes.

In this book, Prusiner tells the remarkable story of his discovery of prions - infectious proteins that replicate and cause disease but surprisingly contain no genetic material - and reveals how superb and meticulous science is actually practiced with talented teams of researchers who persevere. He recounts the frustrations and rewards of years of research and offers fascinating portraits of his peers as they raced to discover the causes of fatal brain diseases.

Still grieving the loss of her husband, Delia reconnects with a man from her past—and suddenly finds herself living inside her own romantic comedy. What begins as an unlikely spark soon blossoms into a love story that defies the odds, even in the face of life’s most difficult challenges.

A rollicking history of the life and work of an unheralded genius: Dr. Solomon Snyder, whose experiments with mind-altering drugs helped change the way we think about the causes and treatments of schizophrenia. This program is read by the author. In the 1950s, the field of psychiatry had nothing...

It was a low-level panic at first, but very quickly there were big changes taking place. Day by day, wards were being cleared to make way for Covid-positive patients. Things were getting worse by the day. For the first time in my nursing career, I felt scared. As a palliative care nurse, it is...

Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) is known around the world as the “Father of Psychoanalysis,” and for good reason. If anything, Freud’s first patient was himself. A sufferer of psychosomatic symptoms, Freud diagnosed himself as having a repressed antagonism against his father. From there, Freud began to build on his now famous concepts of the unconscious, infantile sexuality and repression. And of course, there’s his famous theory on the structure of the mind, which has made Id and Ego a commonly used part of the English lexicon.

This volume is a telling of 29 years of caring for and about people who, but for the grace of God, could be me or my family. It is a telling of surviving and thriving in often difficult circumstances. Starting as a mental health worker in 1988, I received my registered nurse license in 1993 and continued as a psychiatric nurse until I ended compensated employment in 2017.