Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient

Description

“Deeply moving.” —Damon Tweedy, New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat New York Times bestselling author Theresa Brown tells a poignant,powerful, and intensely personal story about breast cancer. She brings us along with her from the mammogram that would change her life through her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, she finds herself continually surprised by the lack of compassion in the medical maze—just as so many of us have. Why is she expected to wait over a long weekend to hear the results of her cancer tests if they are ready? Where is the empathy from caregivers? Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being labeled a “difficult” patient could mean she gets worse care.  As she did in her book The Shift, Brown draws us into her work with the unforgettable details of her daily life—the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the frustrated patients—but from her new perch as a patient, she also takes a look back with rare candor at some of her own  cases as a nurse and considers what she didn’t know then and what she could have done better.  A must-read for fans of Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, Suleika Jaouad’s Between Two Kingdoms, and all of us who have tried to find healing through our health-care system. Cover Also by Theresa Brown Title Page Copyright Page Dedication Disclaimer Contents Prologue Part One: Who Am I? 1. Day One 2. Rage 3. Bob & Wendy 4. First You Cry 5. Storytelling 6. An Ideal Patient 7. What We Talk About When We Talk About Amputation 8. My Radiologist 9. Reason Not the Need 10. Revelations 11. I Lost You Part Two: Nurse Brown, MIA 12. Balance 13. Bedside Manner 14. Not on the List 15. Theresa in Cancerland, Part I 16. Theresa in Cancerland, Part II 17. Nature/Nurture 18. Chemo: Yes or No 19. RadOne 20. Slow Burn 21. Pickles 22. A Friend in Need 23. Spatchcock Part Three: Out of the Frying Pan 24. Tam 25. Tam, Continued 26. Tam, Conclusion 27. On the Side 28. Figures of Speech Part Four: The Long Haul 29. Pronouncement 30. Survivor 31. A Body in Motion 32. Just a Few Breast Cancer Patients Sitting Around Talking 33. Back to Work 34. Turtles 35. One-Year Mammogram 36. Moving 37. Sue Larson 38. Two Afternoons in Hospice 39. The New Road Epilogue Acknowledgments References Additional Reading