Customer Reviews

Burn Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

On August 3, my wife was burned in central Anatolia. On August 15, we med-vaced her to the United States. On September 1, I bought this book. On September 20, I received the book. I was so rapt by the writing that I finished this book in two days. Understand, my wife was in the hospital at the time. Reading was not a priority. I visited my wife daily while I ran a family and my own business.

Sometimes a writer's capabilities can so overwhelm the topic. A good writer can make the worst topics readable. Burns, sores, sepsis, pain, and scars are what I neither care to read about nor wish others to read about. The sterile black ink on the white pages cannot deliver the sensations to you of the stench associated with the dead skin, nor show you the grotesque complexity of the red and yellow skin which bleeds easily and often.

I no more would ask a person to experience what my family has lived the past few months, than I would ask them to clean my plumbing. Burns are a horrible topic which Ms. Ravage has managed to make less horrible.

I used this book for something more than enjoyment. The doctors' mouths, often as clasped as the arteries of their surgical patients, tell little to the patients' family, and when they speak, the language is too often cliched with inexplicables and nondeterminatives. This book answered questions, told me what to look forward to, and outlined what to anticipate. This was my "Burn Patients' Questions for Dummies." But, written well.

I cringed. I cried. I swallowed hard. And, at times, I had to leave the book. The writng and insight were as razor sharp as the scalpels discussed and referenced in the portion discussing grafting.

Good work Ms. Ravage! You helped a great deal. I can only tell others in my predicament, read this book. And, after you read the book, you will feel better about what there is looming in the slowly progressing and little discussed world of burns.

Before reading this,I knew very little about burns and burn care, other than they were messy, smelly, painful and left terrible scars. This book covers the burn treatment floor, Bigelow 13, at Mass General, one of the best burn units in the country. Very informative, if a little boring in places. At times, the author goes into long biological speeches about layers of skin and how they regrow and blah blah blah blah blah . It can read like a high school anatomy book- not exactly something that captures one's attention for long periods of time. But the rest of it- the explanation of procedures, case histories and daily routines of a burn unit- was fascinating.

Recommended, but get some coffee for the slow parts, and DO NOT eat while reading this book.

Ms. Ravage's book focuses on the Burn Unit at Mass General Hospital, but in the course of providing the context for the current Burn Unit she weaves together several narratives. First, she offers an informative and well-written account of the history of burns and burn treatment from ancient times to modern. Additionally she describes the course of the severe burn injury, the series of shocks severe burns provide to the system and the medical interventions that have been developed in order to allow the burn patient to survive these shocks. Tied to her medical-scientific discussion are profiles of the people who make the Burn Unit work, and accounts of two patients who were treated by them. These case studies are based in large part on interviews with the patients and their families.

As a Burn Survivor who spent two months in the MGH Burn Unit not long after this book came out, I can vouch for its accuracy in depicting the unit, the staff, the course of treatment and many of the key issues facing burn survivors. Not everything I have read on the topic has held my interest, but this book did.

This book is exceptional. It goes into details and explains what happens to the burn victim's body and why it happens. I would recommend this book to medical students...but is also a good read to those not in the medical field. It has a story like flow and is presented in a very interesting way that captures your attention.

I have just today finished Burn Unit. Finishing a book for me is relatively unusual. I always have a few going at a time, and most get only part way - they just don't get picked up again. But I keep returning to this book. Barbara Ravage has written a classic.

Her writing is engaging, as she monitors burn survivors Dan and Tom and their families, without giving in to simplification and caricature. These people feel real.

Their caregivers are presented in the context of their work. They convey the story of the technology and the medicine of burn care, in a remarkably lucid, interesting way. Their personal lives are, appropriately, only sketched.

I had experience in the MGH Burn Unit as a fourth-year med student, in 1973. And I've had 26 years of primary care internal medicine in a rural area. This book has tought me a world of new perspectives and insights, basic science and intensive care medicine, and especially understandings about wound healing.

And I believe the author has communicated this difficult material in a manner which will be comprehensible to any serious reader, even one without great technical background. Her ability to appeal to, and to be important to, a diverse reader base, reflects the maturity of her perspective.

I have been recommending this book to friends and profiessional colleagues, as a most-worthwhile read. Any care provider will gain valuable understandings from this pleasant task.

I'll start out here by saying that I am a medical non-fic junkie. I have read just about every medical narrative non-fiction book to come out in the last five years, and I am simply intrigued with the behind the scenes look at what goes on in hospitals and in the minds of doctors and nurses. I was in the hospital a lot as a teen and I think that is where my interest started.

So I am not coming from a place of particular interest in burns, more from a general medical interest standpoint. If you are specifically interested in learning about what goes on in a burn unit or what goes on in a patient's body after they are burned, then this is an amazing book. It is very informative. The author talks about historical fires and how they contributed to medical knowledge about burns, the physiological changes that occur in a human's body after becoming burned, and the medical treatment. She also personalizes the burn unit by showing actual people who suffered a burn and showing their progress.

But for me, coming from the perspective of wanting a thrilling and informative non-fiction read about the medical field (like Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Collins), this didn't fit the bill. The historical and informative parts that told us about advances in the burn field and what happens physiologically were too dry to hold my attention without having any specific reason to learn about them, and the people she profiled didn't capture my heart and interest.

So, if you are looking for a general interest read that will capture your attention even with no particular interest in the field, look elsewhere, but if you have experiences with burns or are a doctor, then this is a really interesting and informative read. It is gory in parts, so be warned.

This is a powerful book, packed with information about the history of burn treatment, the structure and nature of skin, medical techniques, how the body heals and what it takes to work in the demanding field of burn care. The personal stories of the physicians, nurses, inventors, patients and their families sparkle with life.

At times, I must admit, I became impatient with the structure of the book, the deep dives into details about historic fires or what felt like more information than I wanted to know about a particular medical technique. I longed to get back to what was happening with the people who came to feel like my patients, my staff.

The wonderful thing is that Barbara Ravage can make you feel so intimately connected to the people she interviewed, the scenes she witnessed. You sense her driving curiosity and fascination. She makes descriptions of complicated information such as the body's responses to burns or difficult medical procedures vivid and clear. Sometimes her analogies will even make you smile.

I plan to recommend this book to several friends.

Being neither a medical professional nor a burn survivor, I didn't expect to be completely fascinated by this book, but I was - once I started reading it, I really couldn't put it down until I'd finished it.

Ms. Ravage's skill in weaving together vivid details of life in the burn unit with overviews of burn science reminded me of one of my favorite writers, John McPhee. Like McPhee, she's able to take a subject the reader knows little about and within a few pages make that subject completely riveting. She also has McPhee's rare ability to illuminate her subject from every possible angle: this book covers the history of burn treatments, stories of some of the most deadly U.S. fires, how the human body responds to burns, the heroic daily work of burn doctors and nurses - and, most unforgettably, the hell endured by recovering burn patients. I was especially impressed by how perfect Ms. Ravage's tone was throughout the book: the scientific passages are easily understandable but not dumbed-down, and the descriptions of the emotionally-charged interactions among the burn unit staff , the patients, and their families are unforgettably moving without a hint of sentimentality.

Despite the grimness of the subject, this book leaves you feeling wonderfully inspired by what ordinary people are capable of: unbelievable courage, endurance, devotion, and compassion.

In BURN UNIT, Barbara Ravage satisfies every one of my requirements for favored nonfiction: previously unknown subject matter, meticulous research, superb selection of detail, a focus on the people involved, and a story well told. Thank you, Barbara. You allow me to recover as patient and grieve as family. You amaze and humble me with your depiction of the incredible people in the profession. You surprise me with your section on who gets burned. You skillfully intercut between the lives you follow and the description and history of the field. Once wasn't enough. I had to read BURN UNIT twice!

In her riveting, intensely researched book, Burn Unit, Barbara Ravage draws the reader into the painful and perilous world in which the seriously burned exist. One qualifies for this world in a flash and once there, life can never be as it was. We follow two families to Mass General's superior Burn Unit, learning in fascinating detail what a separate world it is. Everything in this book is so finely drawn, from the family members suddenly faced with their own conflicting emotions, to the exquisitely-trained hospital personnel, to the description of the burns themselves. Ravage has written a compelling book about a little-understood subject. It's a book one cannot easily turn away from.