Author: Gabriel Brownstein
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1610399471
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
This absorbing and poignant book is not merely the story of one writer's flawed heart. It is a history of cardiac medicine, a candid personal journey, and a profound reflection on mortality. Born in 1966 with a congenital heart defect known as the tetralogy of Fallot, Gabriel Brownstein entered the world just as doctors were learning to operate on conditions like his. He received a life-saving surgery at five years old, and since then has ridden wave after wave of medical innovation, a series of interventions that have kept his heart beating. The Open Heart Club is both a memoir of a life on the edge of medicine's reach and a history of the remarkable people who have made such a life possible. It begins with the visionary anatomists of the seventeenth century, tells the stories of the doctors (all women) who invented pediatric cardiology, and includes the lives of patients and physicians struggling to understand the complexities of the human heart. The Open Heart Club is a riveting work of compassionate storytelling, a journey into the dark hinterlands between sickness and health lit by bright moments of humor and inspiration.
Author: Stephen Westaby
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465094848
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
In gripping prose, one of the world's leading cardiac surgeons lays bare both the wonder and the horror of a life spent a heartbeat away from death When Stephen Westaby witnessed a patient die on the table during open-heart surgery for the first time, he was struck by the quiet, determined way the surgeons walked away. As he soon understood, this detachment is a crucial survival strategy in a profession where death is only a heartbeat away. In Open Heart, Westaby reflects on over 11,000 surgeries, showing us why the procedures have never become routine and will never be. With astonishing compassion, he recounts harrowing and sometimes hopeful stories from his operating room: we meet a pulseless man who lives with an electric heart pump, an expecting mother who refuses surgery unless the doctors let her pregnancy reach full term, and a baby who gets a heart transplant-only to die once it's in place. For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and of Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, Open Heart offers a soul-baring account of a life spent in constant confrontation with death.
Author: Elie Wiesel
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0805212582
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 97
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Book Description
A profoundly and unexpectedly intimate, deeply affecting summing up of life so far, from one of the most cherished moral voices of our time. Eighty-two years old, facing emergency heart surgery and his own mortality, Elie Wiesel reflects back on his life. Emotions, images, faces, and questions flash through his mind. His family before and during the unspeakable Event. The gifts of marriage, children, and grandchildren that followed. In his writing, in his teaching, in his public life, has he done enough for memory and for the survivors? His ongoing questioning of God—where has it led? Is there hope for mankind? The world’s tireless ambassador of tolerance and justice gives us a luminous account of hope and despair, an exploration of the love, regrets, and abiding faith of a remarkable man. Translated from the French by Marion Wiesel
Author: Dalai Lama
Publisher: Back Bay Books
ISBN: 0316045837
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 80
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Book Description
An introduction to the core of Buddhism by its greatest teacher, An Open Heart is the successor to the bestselling The Art of Happiness, the Dalai Lama's clear and simple guide to finding compassion and happiness. 25 photos. (World Religions)
Author: Clara Hughes
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476756996
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 240
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Book Description
The long-awaited memoir by Canada’s most celebrated Olympian and advocate for mental health. From one of Canada’s most decorated Olympians comes a raw but life-affirming story of one woman’s struggle with depression. In 2006, when Clara Hughes stepped onto the Olympic podium in Torino, Italy, she became the first and only athlete ever to win multiple medals in both Summer and Winter Games. Four years later, she was proud to carry the Canadian flag at the head of the Canadian team as they participated in the opening ceremony of the Vancouver Olympic Winter Games. But there’s another story behind her celebrated career as an athlete, behind her signature billboard smile. While most professional athletes devote their entire lives to training, Clara spent her teenage years using drugs and drinking to escape the stifling home life her alcoholic father had created in Elmwood, Winnipeg. She was headed nowhere fast when, at sixteen, she watched transfixed in her living room as gold medal speed skater Gaétan Boucher effortlessly raced in the 1988 Calgary Olympics. Dreaming of one day competing herself, Clara channeled her anger, frustration, and raw ambition into the endurance sports of speed skating and cycling. By 2010, she had become a six-time Olympic medalist. But after more than a decade in the gruelling world of professional sports that stripped away her confidence and bruised her body, Clara began to realize that her physical extremes, her emotional setbacks, and her partying habits were masking a severe depression. After winning bronze in the last speed skating race of her career, she decided to retire from that sport, determined to repair herself. She has emerged as one of our most committed humanitarians, advocating for a variety of social causes both in Canada and around the world. In 2010, she became national spokesperson for Bell Canada’s Let’s Talk campaign in support of mental health awareness, using her Olympic standing to share the positive message of the power of forgiveness. Told with honesty and passion, Open Heart, Open Mind is Clara’s personal journey through physical and mental pain to a life where love and understanding can thrive. This revelatory and inspiring story will touch the hearts of all Canadians.
Author: Sandeep Jauhar
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374717001
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
The bestselling author of Intern and Doctored tells the story of the thing that makes us tick For centuries, the human heart seemed beyond our understanding: an inscrutable shuddering mass that was somehow the driver of emotion and the seat of the soul. As the cardiologist and bestselling author Sandeep Jauhar shows in Heart: A History, it was only recently that we demolished age-old taboos and devised the transformative procedures that have changed the way we live. Deftly alternating between key historical episodes and his own work, Jauhar tells the colorful and little-known story of the doctors who risked their careers and the patients who risked their lives to know and heal our most vital organ. He introduces us to Daniel Hale Williams, the African American doctor who performed the world’s first open heart surgery in Gilded Age Chicago. We meet C. Walton Lillehei, who connected a patient’s circulatory system to a healthy donor’s, paving the way for the heart-lung machine. And we encounter Wilson Greatbatch, who saved millions by inventing the pacemaker—by accident. Jauhar deftly braids these tales of discovery, hubris, and sorrow with moving accounts of his family’s history of heart ailments and the patients he’s treated over many years. He also confronts the limits of medical technology, arguing that future progress will depend more on how we choose to live than on the devices we invent. Affecting, engaging, and beautifully written, Heart: A History takes the full measure of the only organ that can move itself.
Author: Akil Taher, MD
Publisher: Notion Press
ISBN: 9781638735229
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 138
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Book Description
Angioplasty at fifty-six, open-heart surgery at sixty-one, running his first half marathon less than a year later. This is the remarkable and inspiring story of Dr. Akil Taher, who transformed from a middle-aged couch potato with a dangerously bad diet into a vital, energetic athlete, ever seeking new challenges and adventures. In this book, Dr. Taher relates the journey of his transformation-how even as a physician who knew better, he led an unhealthy lifestyle; how he ignored the warnings of his heart disease and other chronic ailments; and how after his bypass surgery, he set out to radically change his life to heal his body and his spirit. Training for and competing in his first half marathon was only the start. In compelling detail, he recounts his running in the Chicago, Boston, and Mumbai Marathons; his pilgrimage to Mount Kailash and climbing Mount Kilimanjaro; his first triathlon and 100-mile bike race. More importantly, Dr. Taher also discusses the enormous role diet plays in preventing as well as recovering from heart disease as well as other chronic illnesses, such as cancer, diabetes, and kidney disease. Citing reputable sources and using his own diet and health as examples, he guides the reader away from a diet heavy in meat, dairy, eggs, and sugar and proposes healthier eating-and living-that is grounded in a whole-food, plant-based diet. Open Heart is an essential read for anyone eager to change unhealthy lifestyle choices and embrace the excitement of a vibrant new life.
Author: Jon Frazier
Publisher: Independently Published
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
Are you or someone you know having open heart surgery? Getting Cracked is a humorous and informative story about preparing for an open heart surgical procedure. While many people have questions about how to prepare for open heart surgery, very few surgeons have had the surgery themselves to explain what really happens to a patient's body during and after surgery. This story is told through the author's eyes. The author not only works in surgery administering anesthesia for a living, but actually had an open heart surgery himself. This book walks patients and families through preparation, the surgical procedure, and what to expect when you get home from the hospital. The author describes in laymen terms the details of what will happen to the patient's body in an easy-to-read format and funny tone. If you are looking for a book to help you understand how to prepare for surgery, the surgical process itself, or just find a way to feel more comfortable with the ordeal a family member is embarking upon, this book is for you.
Author: Celeste Ng
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1408716909
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 291
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Book Description
'It's impossible not to be moved' Stephen King 'Stunning...this novel will break your heart and fire up your courage' Mail on Sunday The New York Times bestseller, a deeply heart-wrenching novel about the unbreakable love between a mother and child and a TIMES BEST PAPERBACK OF APRIL 2023 Twelve-year-old Bird Gardner lives a quiet existence with his loving father, a former linguist who now shelves books in a university library. His mother Margaret, a Chinese American poet, left without a trace when he was nine years old. He doesn't know what happened to her-only that her books have been banned-and he resents that she cared more about her work than about him. Then one day, Bird receives a mysterious letter containing only a cryptic drawing, and soon he is pulled into a quest to find her. His journey will take him back to the many folktales she poured into his head as a child, through the ranks of an underground network of heroic librarians, and finally to New York City, where he will finally learn the truth about what happened to his mother, and what the future holds for them both. Our Missing Hearts is an old story made new, of the ways supposedly civilized communities can ignore the most searing injustice. It's about the lessons and legacies we pass on to our children, and the power of art to create change.
Author: Christine Madrid
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781977244925
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 100
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Book Description
In this grief journal, Valenzuela uses her own candid and vulnerable excerpts from her personal journey of grief. Having suffered the loss of her own child, Valenzuela found healing and truth through the process of writing. Darkness, fears and tragedy are shared with cutting honesty, as Valenzuela takes the reader through the chasm of grief. Valenzuela's need to connect with her son after death was what took her from a surreal and sorrowful state of suspended animation through a metamorphosis that led into a whole new perspective on loss and life. The reader is tenderly guided and prompted to begin their own personal story of loss. The attached pages allow for the reader to express openly their feelings, memories, thoughts and hopes. The message of healing is provided by Valenzuela throughout the book with the hope that the reader will find acceptance of their loss and the ability to both mourn their loved one and live their own life to the fullest once more.
