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Patients Teach a Doctor about Life and Death: Tales from Fifty-Six Years of Practicing

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Several years ago, cardiologist Bob Carey, M.D., decided he wanted his grandchildren to understand how much he had learned over his 56-year career not from his colleagues or from medical school but from his patients and their caregivers. "I wanted to share their kindness and courage," he explains. "I wanted to write stories about my patients so my 12 grandchildren could learn from them as I had." His daughter shared what he had written to an author who encouraged Bob to realize a book.

This past year, Dr. Carey's dream finally came true within the pages of Patients Teach a Doctor About Life and Death: Tales from Fifty-Six Years of Practicing. Published by Xlibris, Patients Teach a Doctor About Life and Death is a compendium of detailed and inspiring personal vignettes culled from Bob's experiences over half a century. Beginning with his early years at Boston University Medical School's main teaching hospital (now called Boston Medical Center) in the early 1950s, Bob's book recounts the story of his treating his very first patient, Gladys: "a tall lady with enlarged lymph nodes in her neck" originally diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. Though ultimately dying from heart disease and kidney failure, Gladys remained Bob's patient for nearly two decades, teaching Bob that "one can never be absolutely certain of a person's ultimate prognosis." This lesson stayed with him throughout his many years of practice.

After the initial introduction, Patients Teach a Doctor About Life and Death is divided into sections that describe his years in medical school, his military service in Okinawa, his years of medical residency as well as private practice, family experiences, time in China and extensive pro-bono work in South America. Each section conveys heartwarming stories from Dr. Carey's unique point of view. A fellow doctor and friend R.A. Macdonald testifies that Bob's book is the story of a doctor "who is a product of a largely bygone era... A time when doctors actually listened to their patients."

An absorbing read, Patients Teach a Doctor About Life and Death has much to say about how relationships work between doctors and patients from a medical standpoint as well as teaching us how curiosity and compassion play into successful outcomes. Proceeds of the book are being donated to a foundation established by Bob to provide scholarships for medical students to work with doctors in poor countries.

Born in Arlington, Massachusetts in 1929, Bob Carey is a graduate of Harvard College and Boston University School of Medicine. In 1954 he married his high school sweetheart, Mary O'Neill, and the two went on to raise five children. In 1960 he joined a practice in Arlington, and later helped found Internist Inc., a group practice, in 1970. This practice joined Lahey Clinic in 1993 until Bob officially retired from medical practice in 1998. Since then, he has been teaching at BU and Harvard Medical School, and volunteering annually for pro bono medical service in Bolivia and Ecuador. [...]

Dr. Bob Carey is a dying breed. As a physician, I appreciate the love, sweat and pain he poured into his patients. He slept in hospital rooms to make sure they stayed alive, he drove them to hospitals when ambulances were "too slow" and he listened hour after hour as sexually abused women told him their stories, during a time when no one talked of such things. He drove his secretaries crazy because he spent too long with each patient and was continually behind. I cried reading many stories and laughed at a few. Mostly, I marvelled at such a man who loved in a manner which is foreign to the rest of us. He is more interesting than Paul Farmer (Mountain Beyond Mountain) because he healed broken lives in the United States, not just in Third World countries (he did that too.) Dr. Carey's book should be mandatory for all high school students in order that they could learn what life is really all about. Thank you for a life so beautifully lived and inspiring to those of us who took a peak inside it!

What a wonderful and inspiring book! Every nurse and doctor should read this. Despite the lack of technology available at the time Dr Carey started his practice, he managed to REALLY CARE for all of his patients. The love for his patients came through every time. The conditions under which most people, let along doctors, would not endure. Despite the lack of resources, and numbers of patients he saw, he still made them better by his undivided attention to their needs and not his own. Thank you Dr Carey for making me feel better through reading your book. Thanks to his wife, Mary and children, for being there and sharing him with the world.

"Medicine is JIN" is a Japanese old saying. JIN can be translated as benevolence, humanity, or kind sympathy, but the translation is impossible, and unnecessary: you'll find its true meaning in this wonderful book, just like in Kurosawa's film, Akahige. The author's deep feelings for the sufferings of the people will strike you in every chapter. Especially the Okinawa part moved me strongly maybe because I am a Japanese and yet I didn't know many things described there, the people's life in extreme poverty immediately after the war. Between Japanese poor patiens and this American doctor there was a warm "mutual respect". And the family crisis part! This book will make you cry very often. The author's history is amazing. Not only as an insightful devoted doctor but as a loving husband and a father. The modesty of the title shows his posture towards his job which will give the readers a quiet but powerful message teaching what is primarily important in life!

After reading this, I ordered another copy of this book and gave it to my young daughter as a gift, and then another copy to my cousin who is a doctor himself. I am glad that they understand English; and this has become one of their best books!! But it is really a pity most Japanese cannot read English and don't know the fact that this American AKAHIGE actually worked hard for Japanese patients, reminding us of "medicine is JIN".

I found this book warm and charming, a little to my surprise when I picked it up. It is warm because on every page it comes through that this doctor really likes his patients and cares about them. It is charming in the sense that it is written in a down to earth style that charms the reader to read more.
This book is by a doctor who is a product of a bygone day, when doctors talked to and listened to their patients. It was before the time of the super-specialist, wherein a specialty makes thinking simpler and pay is more, the heavy technology present. It brings back a time when medicine was not practiced by insurance companies.
On putting the book down, thought provoking questions occurred from the various patients described. Perhaps books like this will fan the spark of caring that comes through in this book.

I have just completed reading your book, which I found interesting reading and personally inspiring. I enjoyed your family references every bit as much as your professional stories. My compliments to the author.

The order was slow in coming, but it was in perfect shape. We are satisfied.