From Publishers Weekly
National Book Award–winner Nuland (
How We Die) turns over his latest collection to the stories of more than a dozen specialists describing their most memorable patients. What is extraordinary about Nuland's compilation is not the medical heroics but the instances of fallibility and vulnerability that prove the doctor is not just human but caring. A bronchoscopist tells of a famed thoracic surgeon who botches a procedure to recover a small cap a child has swallowed Well, chappies, he chirped, here's my chance to demonstrate the procedure again. Rather like a double feature at the cinema, yes? When that, too, fails, the frustrated surgeon must do major surgery to rectify what should have been a 10-minute fix. Even the scoundrel who gets a nurse fired rather than be caught in his own impropriety shows a recognizable humanity in his hilarious retelling of barging into a procedure unwashed and unwanted, and being chased from the premises by a mad-as-hell surgeon. Nuland adds his own commentary after many of the stories, but it's just window dressing. Here's medicine as it's actually practiced—by humans awed by the privilege of both their practice and patients.
(Apr.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Nuland takes the Canterbury Tales one quirky step further with these stories he collected from medical specialists ranging from anesthesiologist to urologist, in which each focuses on a particularly difficult or memorable professional event and/or patient. Identities and locations are carefully concealed by placing just about everyone, unless the story hinges on locale, at a teaching hospital called Canterbury. Names are changed, and not just to protect the innocent. No one really needs to know the identity of the randy young chest surgeon whose regular dalliances with hospital “probies” (probationary female employees) nearly cost him his job. Worse, to save his own skin, the scoundrel made a preemptive attack that cost his accuser her job. One might, however, like to know the name of the ethical Jewish ophthalmologist who never ratted out the out-of-wedlock pregnant daughter of his racist military superior. In all, the tales indeed resemble Chaucer’s—some humorous, others poignant, and where they are cryptic, accompanied by a note from the more-than-skillful narrator. --Donna Chavez
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
