Michele Harper, M.D. — The Beauty in Breaking: A Memoir (Book Review)
Michele Harper, M.D. opens her heart in a memoir about her experiences in medicine, The Beauty in Breaking. But this book is more than that. It’s part meditation on finding herself amid divorce, moving to a new city, and finding peace in yoga and stillness. She’s also...Ruther Coker Burks —All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South (Book Review)
Ruth Coker Burks writes about her experiences caring for HIV/AIDS patients in All the Young Men: A Memoir of Love, AIDS, and Chosen Family in the American South. She wasn’t a nurse or other health care provider. She was just a young woman with a big heart and buckets...Book Review: Attention, A Love Story by Casey Schwartz
Casey Schwartz writes a memoir and social history mash up in Attention, A Love Story. She’s a thirty-something woman who started using Adderal, a drug to treat ADHD, in college. But she took it without being diagnosed. It’s just one of those things college kids do,...Book Review: From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
If I’m going to read about death, let it be a book by Caitlin Doughty. And in this book, Doughty travels the world, investigating various death-related practices. She makes the topic fun, which obviously sounds different from how we typically perceive death. What I...Book Review: Over-Diagnosed by H. Gilbert Welch, M.D.
Over-Diagnosed: Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health is a physician researchers’ perspective on the state of medical practice in the United States. It was published in 2011, so some of the information is dated. But the fundamental questions raised by H....Book Review: One Doctor by Brendan Reilly
Dr. Brendan Reilly creates a gripping memoir, One Doctor, by balancing several elements. As a hospitalist, a doctor working strictly with patients admitted to hospital, he details individual cases. At the same time, he reflects on how the cases affect him beyond the...Book Review: No Apparent Distress by Rachel Pearson, MD
In No Apparent Distress, Rachel Pearson writes a riveting account of her time in medical school. She’s especially focused on her work at a student-run charity medical clinic in Galveston, TX. Given everything happening these days along the Texas border, it’s even more...Book Review: Elderhood by Louise Aronson
Louise Aronson subtitles Elderhood with the following: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life. I submit that she focuses primarily on the second of these topics, rather than the other two. And that makes sense because she has many years of...Book Review: Shifting Into High Gear by Kyle Bryant
Kyle Bryant is a man on a mission. He’s living with a rare disease called Friedreich’s Ataxia (FA). Diagnosed at age 17, it causes him to be extremely unsteady on his feet. FA isn’t just about mobility. It causes vision and hearing loss, as well as shortening the...Book Review: Cancerland: A Medical Memoir by David Scadden, M.D.
David Scadden, M.D. titled his book Cancerland: A Medical Memoir. Truthfully, it’s more of a scientific history book. There’s very little in it that constitutes memoir, in the sense of personal experiences. He does tell a bit of his mother’s cancer story, and some...Graphic Novel Review: Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 by M.K. Czerwiec
Taking Turns is a memoir in graphic novel format from MK Czerwiec. She was one of the nurses caring for HIV / AIDS patients at Chicago’s Illinois Masonic Medical Center in the 1980s and 1990s. I found this book on Hoopla after reading The Great Believers. Rebecca...Book Review: Sick: A Memoir by Porochista Khakpour
Porochista Khakpour spends much of her book, Sick: A Memoir, talking about relationships. Sometimes it’s her parents or girlfriends. But more often it’s the men in her life. I’ve seen reviewers bemoan this. But here’s what I think. A single young woman, battling...Book Review: The Demon Under the Microscope by Thomas Hager
Thomas Hager writes a compelling medical and scientific history in The Demon Under the Microscope. Subtitled From Battlefield Hospitals to Nazi Labs, One Doctor’s Heroic Search for the World’s First Miracle Drug, its scope is incredibly wide. This book is the perfect...Book Review: Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain by Abby Norman
Abby Norman tells her often harrowing story with grace in Ask Me About My Uterus. She’s had to make her way through life in pain, and mostly alone. I’m in awe of her courage and fortitude! Norman spent her childhood with an absent father, and a functionally absent...Book Review: Backbone: Living with Chronic Pain Without Turning into One by Karen Duffy
Karen Duffy’s second book, Backbone: Living with Chronic Pain Without Turning into One, is meant to be a funny and motivational read. Duffy has certainly lived through more days of illness and pain than not. And she has some celebrity cred which adds a bit to the...Bookshop.Org Affiliate
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Jane A. Swartz
ARNP, MSN, Rheumatology Nurse Practitioner
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