Customer Reviews

The Measure of Our Days: A Spiritual Exploration of Illness

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As a physician also working with human mortality and fragility on a daily basis, this book resonated deeply with my experience. I found the eloquence in the lives of the 8 patients, however, as opposed to Dr. Groopman's narrative. While obviously a great man, I found his ego distracting and reminiscent of "old school" physicians - patronizing, omniscient and infallible. He alluded to himself way too many times at the expense of his patient's story.

This is not to say I would not recommend this book to a friend, I would. What the patients have to offer is priceless.

Jerome Groopman is familiar to many by now as a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, where at least one of the essays in the current book first appeared. Besides being a prolific writer, he also finds time in his day to be the Recanati Professor of Immunology at Harvard Medical School, Chief of Experimental Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and a leading researcher on cancer and AIDS. One wonders how he manages all this, but he does, and in the course of his work he manages also to persuades some of his patients facing life-threatening illness to sit for their literary portraits. The 8 individuals represented in this book (two of whom were personal friends of Groopman before their illness struck) and Groopman, their caring scribe, are to be thanked for this finely crafted and enthralling account of persons facing death and their relationships with their doctor. Groopman explains the doctor's side of it:

I have stood countless times...looking into the faces of a family and telling them their loved one has cancer. You steel yourself for the moment. ...You calm your face and maintain a firm voice, so that while you tell the family the truth, that the disease is aggressive and its treatment toxic, you simultaneously assert another truth, that there is a chance, a real chance, that the cancer can be defeated and the loved one saved. With this compassionate but determined show of force, you prevent the family and the patient from being overwhelmed by the ferocious surprise attack of the illness. Yes, you emphasize again that a cure is never assured. But once this is said, you move decidedly from despair to hope. You have to show that the battle already has been engaged, that you are the general of the army, that there is a strategy in place, that powerful weapons are at hand, and that no mercy will be shown the enemy. And as you mobilize your resources, of medical science and clinical experience, to fight to save this person, you look hard into the eyes of the family and search for the core of their strength. ...You need to understand this inner strength, where it comes from, how deep and resilient it is. Once you find it and comprehend it, you try to take it in your hand and fuse it with your own, because together this creates the unified forced required to sustain the patient through the hell that awaits and to carry him back to normal life.(90-91)

The book can be viewed as a study of these fusions of force. The religious ruminations of doctor and patient and felicitous metaphors lifted from other areas of life - sports, venture capital, art, etc. weave together in the intense dialogue that evolves between the two allies in the struggle, a dialogue that may be crucial to the progress of treatment or, when need be, essential to a well-managed surrender. Will appeal to: any reader, but especially spiritual highly literate readers.

This book genuinely portrays the dynamic aspect of a patient-doctor relationship. Jerome Groopman is an extraordinary writer and physician who is able to touch the hearts of his patients. Through his eight powerful and compelling stories, he is able to give the reader insight and capture the life lessons learned from these terminally ill patients.

Dr. Groopman leads us through the lives of eight patients with a terminal illness. The book starts with Kirk, an aggressive businessman who is afflicted with kidney cancer and is determined to fight his battle with a new chemotherapy treatment only to realize that his life has been empty. Groopman then moves on to describe a Catholic boy who underwent successful therapy from leukemia, but died of AIDS contracted from a blood transfusion. Another patient, a research fellow in Groopman's own research laboratory has AIDS from a blood transfusion because he was a hemophiliac. My favorite story is Cindy, a single woman with AIDS who boldly fights with Groopman over her fervent desire to adopt a child. Each tragic account illuminates the empathy and compassion Dr. Groopman has toward his patients. He would hug them, hold their hand, listen to them, and share their tears.

The Measure of Our Days is a powerful book and the reader gains and understanding of the frailty of human life. The dialogue between Dr. Groopman and his patients is compelling. By reading this book, we can appreciate and value our own lives and the life lessons learned from these terminally ill patients. Definitely a good book, especially for people who are interested in pursuing a career in medicine.

This book presents excellent accounts of a doctor who, above all else, is a good clinician. The accounts contain personal discussion, interesting patients, hard science, and lessons about both medicine and life. Admittedly, this last phrase, "lessons about both medicine and life" sounds cliche but as an obviously empathetic, observant and disciplined clinician, Groopman is well prepared to talk about the serious,universal issues that often arise in his specific line of work.

Though he is a superspecialist, a nice aspect of this book is that Groopman is very objective about medicine overall. The technology he spends works on in lab is not at all treated as a panacea. Simultaneously, he does not shun or wholly embrace alternative medicine. It is simply another example of why he is a good clinician, qualifying the book further.

An excellent, very fast read.

It might be a cliché that knowledge of death leads to knowledge of life, but so long as we can learn from death, the cliché bears repeating, as Dr. Jerome Groopman's book eloquently demonstrates.

The Measure of Our Days narrates the dying and near-death experiences of eight AIDS and cancer victims, all patients at Groopman's Boston clinic. Groopman dedicated himself to terminal patients in 1974, when his father died before his time, at the hands of an overwhelmed general practitioner. He vowed then to help patients fight for life to the end, as his father was not helped. He dedicates his book to the lessons that his terminal patients have taught him.

Groopman's Jewish spirituality infuses each chapter, though the doctor presents his skeptical faith in a graceful, non-preachy way that Gentiles, Jews, and atheists alike will find engaging. Some chapters end with hope, but none with the sense that death can be vanquished. The book is a sort of Jewish-scientific anti-dote to Touched by an Angel and other sentimental treatments of death -- it is less hopeful, but more convincing.

The cumulative force of the stories is very moving, and so is each story individually. A venture capitalist recovers from kidney cancer, only to realize that his life has been hollow and he has been a "short-term investor" all along. A Catholic boy recovers from leukemia, then develops AIDS from a blood transfusion and has to challenge his father and the family priest not to read religion into his condition. A single woman with HIV fights with Groopman over her ardent desire to adopt a child. A writer who feels that he has never produced a great work abandons his dreams and chooses a new path toward fulfillment after a grueling battle with bone marrow cancer.

Each chapter presents vivid side characters, including the diseases themselves. In accessible prose, Groopman describes the science of T-cells and chemotherapy, blood transfusions and HIV, building concise portraits of breast cancer, AIDS, and other ravages of modern death.

Groopman is a memorable character too, fighting for his patients, agonizing over their complications. He accepts the criticism that doctors are often too detached. At the same time he takes us behind the doctor's mask, revealing the emotional torments of working with terminal patients. Sometimes clinical detachment is the only way a doctor can make it through the day. Sometimes it is also the most effective way to save someone's life.

The book benefits from Groopman's fine writing. He has a clinician's eye for detail, good storytelling instincts, and a surprising ability with dialogue. The chapters unfold vividly, with unexpected twists and several dramatic climaxes.

The near-death of a close friend reminds Groopman of the Torah's great truth, that our days on earth are numbered and all human accomplishments will vanish in the end. Groopman's book is one human accomplishment worth savoring and learning from until that time.

No small number of my loved ones have required the care of hematologists -- mother-in-law, nephew, two aunts, father, husband. I worked closely with a group of hematologists for several years and had a close friend in that branch of medicine. How, I always wondered, do they maintain the emotional and spiritual resources needed to continue in this challenging line of work?

Dr. Jerome Groopman addresses that very question in the prologue to "The Measure of Our Days." He writes, "I identify several elements that give me hope and strength in the cold company of death. One is modern science and the potential for change it offers. Another is the wisdom and solace found in faith. And, perhaps most important, as the following stories reveal, I draw on the particular lessons -- of courage and endurance -- gained from my patients."

There is Kirk, a venture capitalist with kidney cancer who learns too late what makes a life worthwhile. Dan, a research fellow with hemophilia, contracted AIDS from Factor VIII concentrates before routine screening of the blood supply. Cindy, in her mid-thirties, tried to get over a broken relationship by taking a "freedom week" at Club Med, and came home infected with HIV; she could not face life without the love of a child so she expressed her faith by adopting an orphan from overseas.

Matt contracted AIDS from a transfusion for his acute leukemia in the year before screening of donated blood. Debbie tried to fight off her metastatic breast cancer with the principles of Tao rather than radiation and chemotherapy. Alex always insisted that he wanted to be assisted to die at the first sign of debility from his AIDS, but when the time came he clung to life and his young lover.

Elizabeth used her social status to bring a power play into her relationships. And finally, Elliott, a lifelong friend of Dr. Groopman, learned to reassess the meaning of worldly achievement.

These patients brought their personal strengths to the engagement, and in the retelling of their cases, Dr. Groopman shows his own spiritual depth and the faith that feeds it.

"The Measure of Our Days" has good layman's explanations of the medical situations involved in the eight cases. If this type of language is within your context at all, then I recommend this book to you. Its message of hope goes beyond the dire medical scenarios and speaks volumes about the human spirit.

Linda Bulger, 2008

All great literature teaches that death is the mother of beauty, that human eloquence begins with the understanding of mortality. How better to know ourselves, the limits of our endurance, and the greatness of our spirit than at the brink?

Jerome Groopman, a cancer and AIDS specialist, tends to dying or seriously ill people every day. His book (the title is from Psalm 39) takes readers into the lives and (sometimes) deaths of eight patients. With each of them, Groopman is both healer and confessor. But in the telling of their stories, he is more: he renders the poetry inherent in their lives and in so doing creates a psalm of the highest order--praising man not only for his strength, but for his ability to see his own weakness and bear it.

The transcendent nature of our mortal experience is the ultimate subject of this book. No two stories are alike; each of the eight men or women (one is a child) carries the weight of illness and death differently, and we learn--through Groopman's telling--that despite the differences they are bound together in one essential way: they see the meaning of their lives with stark, beautiful clarity. This is a clarity most of us rarely experience, and one that Groopmen has been fortunate enough to see and capture for us in these gripping pages. That he is richer and greater for having allowed himself to be touched by these patients is surely evident, as is the rare gift he has given us in writing about them.

"Who is wealthy?" quotes one patient from the Talmud. "He who rejoices in his portion," answers the Rabbi. Readers of this collection of startling, often horrendous tales of suffering and self-knowledge, will also learn about rejoicing.

Good literature requires a good character. This story has eight interesting, poignant characters, men and women that the author learns to understand and love as he treats them. He is good at finding their strengths and also their flaws. The book is set up in a series of eight vignettes, so we get to know each individual patient for only about 30 pages before we're onto the next; however, Dr. Jerome Groopman remains throughout. Unfortunately, unlike his patients, we see no flaw in him. He is the stoic physician, admirable yes, but slightly uninteresting to read. Another reviewer pointed to his 'ego,' though he does not come off as arrogant as much as 'flawless.' We are not bothered by his egotism, but rather bothered becuase we don't see a physician change over time. From the beginning to the end, we see the perfect doctor. He is more or less humble, but also more or less a stagnant, flat character. His stories are deep and affecting, but he, unfortunately, comes off as mysterious and shallow most of the time. That said, the book is highly recommended for its sympathetic portrayal of people with disease and its well written, nonclinical style.

For truly great medical literature, also read My Own Country by Dr. Abraham Verghese. Here we see the physician who is not just a hero--he is a flawed human being and he is incredibly interesting.

Jerome Groopman is a medical doctor specializing in HIV/AIDS and cancer. Through a series of vignettes, each examining his relationship with a particular patient, he explores the spiritual meaning of illness as people grapple with life, death and the choices they face when confronted with life-threatening illnesses.

Dr. Groopman is a rare individual, a healer who reflects deeply on who is patients really are, well beyond the presenting medical symptoms, diagnosis and treatment. He looks at the whole person and relates with each of his patients with respect, concern and excellent medical care. He is a doctor I'd be honored to have should I need his services.

I don't remember why or where I bought this book. I think it came highly recommended to me, as I have worked in HIV research and bioethics for the disabled for years, not as a job, but because it is what I care about. I think I accidently put this book up to sell, thinking it was another book on these same issues I had read years ago. When I got it out to send to another reader, I realized I hadn't read it. I can read quite fast when necessary and after the first few pages in this book, I realized I did not want to send it until I had read the whole thing. So I read it in one evening, and I am so glad I did.

After just undergoing a horrendous couple of years with my own personal physician who threw medication at me in hopes something would help (and he just made things worse), I needed to be reminded there are outstanding and wonderful physicians out there still who see their work not as a way to make money but a way to make a living and provide for their families while still doing the most they can for humanity. I'd read Groopman's work before. He is a very prolific writer, as well as a physician and researcher into HIV and cancer. I don't know how he does it. The man must not sleep ever, and that also earns my admiration. His patients are not easy ones. They are the more difficult ones, and he see his job as being to give them the most time he can possibly squeeze out of their conditions. And that time he gives them, he makes them as comfortable as possible and as able to continue their life's work...this is what is meant by providing people with chronic illness and even illness whose end result is death with a quality of life equal to that, or better than that, than the life they had lived before. Why? Because they know their time is limited, and they seek to fill their remaining time with the most they can stuff into it. EAch of these individuals have different ideas of what constitutes a meaningful life, and each of them learn something from Groopman during their time under his care, and their stories not only taught Groopman something, but in this book they teach the reader something.

I'd always been one of those people who didn't want to undergo chemotherapy for a cancer that would end in death anyhow. But now I understand from Groopman why you would prolong your time here, as long as it could be done in such a way as to achieve my goals and those for my family and friends, and give something back to others as I have always wanted to do (but often had to put to the side while I raised my family).

This is one of the most compassionate books I have ever read. I hate to send it away but at the same time, I want others to read it. It teaches us to put into practice our religious beliefs rather than just spout them. It isn't enough to say 'this is what I believe.' Groopman teaches us that we can put our religious beliefs into daily practice and do the most good by doing that. I would definitely recommend this book as required reading for all students in all medical fields, even research...as we too often lose sight of the very human faces that we are researching for. By putting a human face on these usually unseen people it forces us to work harder and with more focus on moral behavior, whether as researchers, or as medical personnel in daily contact with those who are suffering. Our job is not to judge, but rather to alleviate suffering... Groopman is an outstanding example to all of us, and I hope to incorporate his teachings in my own life and my own work...

Karen L. Sadler