Physical Illness & Psychiatry Books

Against Medical Advice: One Family's Struggle with an Agonizing Medical Mystery

James Patterson, Hal Friedman, Cory Friedman

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

True story that will move you 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I had no idea what having Tourette's syndrome was like; i.e., until
I read AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE by James Patterson and Hal
Friedman . . . it is a true story about how one family dealt with
the reality of having to deal with this debilitating illness.

As Cory, the son with Tourette's indicates:

* I once told my parents that they couldn't live through a single day
with what I go through every day of my life, and that was when I was
a lot better than I am now.

The book is written in his voice. I'm glad the authors went in that direction
because it conveys more powerfully what it must have been like
to have gone through a 13-year journey of both medication and
treatment.

For example, I actually cringed when I read what he had to experience
just to get through school:

* I finally entered high school, and the biggest surprise is that nothing
has really changed. It's turning out to be as much of a minefield as middle
school. Instead of becoming nicer as they've grown up, some of the
meanest kids have become smarter at using my weaknesses for fun
and games. It's as important as ever for them to look cool, and they
do it by putting down others who are different or have problems. I'm an
easy target, and it makes me feel bad just about every single day
of high school.

I was particularly moved by one passage, toward the end of the book,
when his mother made an impassioned plea to get him back into school:

"Let's be honest," she says, her voice suddenly more relaxed but still serious.
"You all know that this isn't about only rules or the number of hours Cory has
physically sat in classes. You have enough reason to help him keep going if
you want to. That's what it really comes down to. Taking what he has been
able to do here so far, thinking about all the amazing things he's achieved out
of school, and helping him to build on them, helping him to keep going, like you
always have before. You've always been on his side. Most of you have been
wonderful to him. Why turn your backs on him now?"

You'll be moved by AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE, and you'll find yourself
rooting for Cory and his family . . . it is a book I highly recommend.

Editorial Review:

Cory Friedman woke up one morning when he was five years old with the uncontrollable urge to twitch his neck. From that day forward his life became a hell of irrepressible tics and involuntary utterances, and Cory embarked on an excruciating journey from specialist to specialist to discover the cause of his disease. Soon it became unclear what tics were symptoms of his disease and what were side effects of the countless combinations of drugs. The only certainty is that it kept getting worse. Simply put: Cory Friedman's life was a living hell.

AGAINST MEDICAL ADVICE is the true story of Cory and his family's decades-long battle for survival in the face of extraordinary difficulties and a maddening medical establishment. It is a heart-rending story of struggle and triumph with a climax as dramatic as any James Patterson thriller. (2008)

The Body Remembers: The Psychophysiology of Trauma and Trauma Treatment

Babette Rothschild

Amazon Price: $20.60 List Price: $30.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: W. W. Norton & Company Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $20.60

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Thank you Dr. Rothschild 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book is wonderful. It is the best of many books I have read on trauma's effects and the treatment of trauma survivors. As a survivor myself, I found the book immensely calming. It illuminated many things I did not notice and explained so many parts of myself that I have lost touch with or no longer understand. Most importantly, it gave truly effective ways of communicating with myself and my body in order to calm myself and learn effective coping mechanisms.

Aside from all that, the book is just plain interesting. The mind-body connection is a fascinating thing. Wow!

Good for lay person and provider alike 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I read this book cover to cover. I found it extremely easy to read. I have recommended this book to several of my colleagues that assist patients with trauma. I feel like this book could be also given to patients. I felt it contained enough biological data to assist persons to understand the basis for the trauma response.

Editorial Review:

Traumatised people hold a memory of that trauma in their brains and bodies. This is the first book to link this phenomenon of somatic memory and the impact of trauma on the body. Reducing the chasm between scentific theory and clinical practice, Rothschild presents techniques for addressing the memory in the body.

Life in the Balance: A Physician's Memoir of Life, Love, and Loss with Parkinson's Disease and Dementia

Thomas Graboys, Peter Zheutlin

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Union Square Press Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $9.97

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

At the age of 49, Dr. Thomas Graboys had reached the pinnacle of his career and was leading a charmed life. A nationally renowned Boston cardiologist popular for his attention to the hearts and souls of his patients, Graboys was part of “The Cardiology Dream Team” summoned to treat Boston Celtics star Reggie Lewis after he collapsed on the court in 1993. He had a beautiful wife, two wonderful daughters, positions on both the faculty of Harvard Medical School and the staff of Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and a thriving private practice.
Today, Grayboys is battling a particularly aggressive form of Parkinson’s disease and progressive dementia, and can no longer see patients or give rounds. He is stooped, and shuffles when he walks, the gait of a man much older than his 63 years. Despite the physical, mental and emotional toll he battles daily, Graboys continues his life-long mission of caring for the world one human being at a time by telling his story so that others may find comfort, inspiration, or validation in their own struggles.
This is an unflinching memoir of a devastating illness as only a consummate physician could write it. One can’t help but imagine what Dr. Graboys, the healer, would say to Tom Graboys, the patient—a face-to-face scene imagined in this inspiring book. In his joint roles, Thomas Graboys finds a way to convey hope, optimism and an appreciation of what it means to be truly alive.

Learning to Breathe: One Woman's Journey of Spirit and Survival

Alison Wright

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

A searing and uplifting account of one woman’s spiritual journey from surviving a terrible accident to a triumphant ascent of Kilimanjaro

On the second day of this century, world- renowned photojournalist Alison Wright was traveling on a windy mountain road in Laos when the bus she was riding in collided with a logging truck and was severed in half. As Alison waited for help to arrive—in excruciating pain and believing she was moments from death—she drew upon her years of meditation practice and concentrated on every breath as if it were her last.

Learning to Breathe is an extraordinary spiritual memoir about the will to survive. After the bus collision, Alison spent fourteen hours without proper medical attention (her arm was first sewn up by a boy with a needle and thread) and endured months of surgeries and grueling physical therapy. She struggled to remain positive while doctors discouraged her from expecting a return to her previous life. Never one to accept defeat, Alison set herself a goal: to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro.

Alison did climb Kilimanjaro, reaching the summit on the morning of her fortieth birthday. Gasping for air once again, she stood at the highest point in Africa, thankful for every moment she’d had since the accident and determined to never again take one single breath for granted. Bringing the story full circle, she retraces her steps in Laos to thank those who helped her, and she has since resumed traveling the world photographing children and the underprivileged.

A Life Worth Living: A Doctor's Reflections on Illness in a High-Tech Era

Robert Martensen

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Editorial Review:

Critical illness is a fact of life. Even those of us who enjoy decades of good health are touched by it eventually, either in our own lives or in those of our loved ones. And when this happens, we grapple with serious and often confusing choices about how best to live with our afflictions. A Life Worth Living is a book for people facing these difficult decisions. Robert Martensen, a physician, historian, and ethicist, draws on decades of experience with patients and friends to explore the life cycle of serious illness, from diagnosis to end of life. He connects personal stories with reflections upon mortality, human agency, and the value of “cutting-edge” technology in caring for the critically ill. Timely questions emerge: To what extent should efforts to extend human life be made? What is the value of nontraditional medical treatment? How has the American health-care system affected treatment of the critically ill? And finally, what are our doctors’ responsibilities to us as patients, and where do those responsibilities end? Using poignant case studies, Martensen demonstrates how we and our loved ones can maintain dignity and resilience in the face of life’s most daunting circumstances.

Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence

Matthew Sanford

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 30 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

One of the best books ever written 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I have read this book now three times over. It is one of the best books I have ever read. It is one of those books that makes you stop and take a look at your life and make changes. The book is extremely well written. The way Matt tells his tragic story and adds his insight makes you admire him greatly. The way he worries about his family in the midst of his own tragedy makes you fall in love with him. The way the story turns out and the way he lives his life presently makes you want to meet him and tell him how much his story has touched you.

Editorial Review:

Matthew Sanford’s life and body were irrevocably changed at age 13 when his family’s car skidded off a snowy Iowa overpass, killing Matt’s father and sister and leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. This pivotal event set Matt on a lifelong journey, from his intensive care experiences at the Mayo Clinic to becoming a paralyzed yoga teacher and founder of a nonprofit organization. Forced to explore what it truly means to live in a body, he emerges with an entirely new view of being a "whole" person. In this searingly candid memoir he delivers a powerful message about the endurance of the human spirit and of the body that houses it.

The Two Kinds of Decay: A Memoir

Sarah Manguso

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The events that began in 1995 might keep happening to me as long as things can happen to me. Think of deep space, through which heavenly bodies fly forever. They fly until they change into new forms, simpler forms, with ever fewer qualities and increasingly beautiful names.

There are names for things in spacetime that are nothing, for things that are less than nothing. White dwarfs, red giants, black holes, singularities.

But even then, in their less-than-nothing state, they keep happening.

At twenty-one, just starting to comprehend the puzzles of adulthood, Sarah Manguso was faced with another: a wildly unpredictable disease that appeared suddenly and tore through her twenties, vanishing and then returning, paralyzing her for weeks at a time, programming her first to expect nothing from life and then, furiously, to expect everything. In this captivating story, Manguso recalls her nine-year struggle: arduous blood cleansings, collapsed veins, multiple chest catheters, the deaths of friends and strangers, addiction, depression, and, worst of all for a writer, the trite metaphors that accompany prolonged illness. A book of tremendous grace and self-awareness, The Two Kinds of Decay transcends the very notion of what an illness story can and should be.

He's Not Autistic But...: How We Pulled Our Son From the Mouth of the Abyss

Tenna Merchent

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 32 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 166 children is born with autism. Tenna Merchent is only too familiar with this frightening statistic as she feared her own son might suffer from this devastating disorder. When her son was born, he seemed healthy. But by the time he was six weeks old, the infant cried for hours each evening if he wasn't constantly nursed. As the months went on, Clay frequently was seriously ill. By the time he was two years old, he could say only a few words, would bang his head for no apparent reason, often walked on his toes, was severely allergic to numerous things, constantly sick, and suffered from nose and chest congestion. He had systemic yeast, was terrified by sudden noises, wouldn't sleep for more than two hours straight, and was unhappy most of the time. All of his symptoms pointed to the possibility of autism. And to make matters worse, Merchent herself became seriously ill. This book describes her journey through traditional medicine, then the move to alternative care. The miracles begin when she discovers a master herbalist who reveals to her the primary cause of their ill health: aluminum. The simplicity of fully curing both herself and her son is astounding, and she illustrates the art of releasing in detail here. Also included is an invaluable list of remedies for common ailments, as well as a section on resources for herbs and homeopathies.

Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors

Susan Sontag

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote Illness as Metaphor, a classic work described by Newsweek as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed. Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

Warm Springs: Traces of a Childhood at FDR's Polio Haven

Susan Richards Shreve

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Warm Springs was warm, not as hot as expected 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Being a post-polio survivior myself, I took great interest in this true account of a young girl's memory of her years there. I was a little disappointed in the building up of Joey's "flying thru the air" to the actual account of his breaking of both his legs...and thats all that was said of that. I gathered she was forced to leave after that,
as the story seems to abruptly end right after that.
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the history of Warm Springs and FDR's Splendid Deception. ( His bout with Polio at Warm Springs.)

Editorial Review:

Just after her eleventh birthday, Susan Richards Shreve was sent to the sanitarium at Warm Springs, Georgia. The polio haven, famously founded by FDR, was "a perfect setting in time and place and strangeness for a hospital of crippled children." During Shreve's two year stay, the Salk vaccine would be discovered, ensuring that she would be among the last Americans to have suffered childhood polio.

At Warm Springs, Shreve found herself in a community of similarly afflicted children, and for the first time she was one of the gang. Away from her fiercely protective mother, she became a feisty troublemaker and an outspoken ringleader. Shreve experienced first love with a thirteen-year-old boy in a wheelchair. She navigated rocky friendships, religious questions, and family tensions, and encountered healing of all kinds. Shreve's memoir is both a fascinating historical record of that time and an intensely felt story of childhood.