front cover of Across The Red Line
Across The Red Line
Stories From The Surgical Life
Richard C. Karl
Temple University Press, 2003
Richard Karl, a doctor and teacher, takes the reader closer than any writer before into the corridors of the hospital, on the surgical table, and into the world of medicine. In these pages we see the tragedies and triumphs of modern medicine: the beauty of surgery done well, and the aftermath of operations that fail to deliver on the hopes of the doctor and patient. We witness the "M&M"—the morbidity and mortality meeting—where doctors scrutinize their own work and mistakes, and the often inevitable outcomes of treatment. Suffused throughout are Karl’s keen observations on the workings of the human body and its immense capacity for healing. "...I celebrate the rich privilege accorded the practicing surgeon. The surgical life is really about bearing witness to the human condition and about respecting the many almost whimsical variations of biology and about the intersection of the two. It is remarkable, really, the way I get to know people so intimately so quickly, and to observe the brave and often noble behavior in them, while I witness the relentless push of biology, the aging and decay, the growth and development, but most especially the healing, both physical and emotional. It is this natural drive of our bodies to repair themselves from all injuries (including the surgeon's wounds) that is the centerpiece of medicine. Without it no surgeon could cut." Written with economy and subtlety, Across the Red Line offers a vivid picture of disease and the miracle of life. It will interest anyone who's ever been on either side of the surgical table.
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The Agony of Heroes
Medical Care for America's Besieged Legions from Bataan to Khe Sanh
Thomas S. Helling
Westholme Publishing, 2024
The inspiring story of the men and women who risked their lives alongside the soldiers fighting some of the most desperate actions in American history
Bataan, Anzio, Bastogne, Chosin, Khe Sanh: names that define the American spirit. They are synonymous with courage, resilience, and determination against great odds. At each of these battles American soldiers and Marines weathered desperation and fear to survive, advance, and triumph. Along with these heroes of the battlefield were no less determined and courageous providers of medical care. From the heat and disease-ridden jungles of Bataan, the precarious beachhead of Anzio, the encircled town of Bastogne, the frozen fields of Chosin, and the forsaken plateau of Khe Sanh, doctors and nurses worked under intense conditions with whatever means at hand, to staunch bleeding, repair damage, and resurrect the dying. In so doing they gave a glimmer of hope for the warriors facing possible death or capitulation. Often completely cut off from vital supplies and modern technology, and under the threat of enemy fire, these medical professionals—men and women—never lost sight of their passionate commitment to the sick and wounded. As noncombatants, this took extraordinary resolve to ignore the mortal threats of explosions and gunfire to focus on the mission of relieving pain, dragging from the brink of death damaged soldiers completely dependent on their resourcefulness. Some of these brave men and women would suffer the same fate as their fighting comrades, cut down by enemy fire in the prime of life, many times in the very task of rendering the bottomless compassion that was their hallmark and sometimes their only tonic. 
In The Agony of Heroes: Medical Care for America’s Besieged Legions from Bataan to Khe Sanh, distinguished surgeon Thomas S. Helling relates the inspirational and compelling stories of the doctors, nurses, corpsmen, aides, and others who braved the most frightening conditions in order to save lives. Their experiences testify to the indomitable human grit that, when asked, transforms ordinary behavior into extraordinary achievements.
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Arterial and Venous Access in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab
Arterial and Venous Access in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab
Abu-Fadel, Mazen
Rutgers University Press, 2016
Percutaneous cardiac and endovascular procedures are performed by a variety of interventional physicians and continue to evolve and expand. One of the most important steps in performing these procedures is vascular access and their Achilles heel is vascular access site complications. This volume is intended to help the clinician by providing a practical overview of the techniques and technologies used in top catheterization laboratories to access the arterial and venous beds. 
 
Dr. Mazen Abu-Fadel and his contributors, part of the renowned cardiovascular team at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, carefully walk the reader through the various techniques used to obtain vascular access into most arterial and venous sites. They thoroughly describe current data, techniques, advantages, risks, and benefits of each vascular access site. Covering everything from anatomic landmarks to closures devices, Arterial and Venous Access in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab offers a complete overview of each procedure. In addition, it provides an up-to-date guide to the best medical technologies and equipment used when performing these procedures.
 
Arterial and Venous Access in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab is an invaluable resource for a wide range of clinical personnel, from attending physicians and trainees to nursing staff and vascular technicians. Written by experienced leaders in the field, it demonstrates how to perform complex, risky procedures while providing patients with expert care.
 
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Biliary Atresia
The Japanese Experience
D. M. Hays and Ken Kimura
Harvard University Press, 1980

Congenital absence or closure of the bile ducts, biliary atresia, is a disease state of unknown etiology, controversial definition, and, until recently, no effective therapy. It is a condition of newborns, most commonly female newborns, and Western methods of treatment have achieved a survival rate no greater than seven percent.

Daniel Hays and Ken Kimura now make available a comprehensive study of radical methods developed in japan which have achieved dramatically more encouraging results over the last twenty-five years. Western and Japanese approaches are compared and contrasted with respect to differential diagnosis, methods of classification, surgical technique, results, complications, and long-range survival. The largely skeptical attitudes of Western surgeons are also examined with revealing insight. While the writing is always temperate, the facts themselves argue most eloquently for a closer appraisal of this option for treating an otherwise fatal disease.

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The Bone Doctor's Concerto
Music, Surgery, and the Pieces in Between
Alvin Crawford
University of Cincinnati Press, 2023
The story of one of Cincinnati’s most influential leaders in medicine.
 
Born in Memphis, Tennessee in 1939, Dr. Alvin Crawford grew up and attended medical school in a segregated world. Beginning with his early life in Orange Mound—a self-contained community for freed slaves established in the 1890s—Crawford’s autobiography describes his flirtation with a music degree and time spent playing in jazz bands through the segregated South. In 1960, Crawford began his ground-breaking medical career with his entrance into the University of Tennessee College of Medicine, becoming the school’s first African American student. After completing his medical training and traveling the world as a surgeon for the Navy, Crawford found himself in Cincinnati, where he established the Comprehensive Pediatric Orthopedic Clinic at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, the first in the region.
 
Underlying this story are the systemic and very personal incidents of racism Crawford experienced throughout his career. His autobiography is a personal account of segregation, integration, ambition, hard work, and taking risks.
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Central Pain
A Neurosurgical Survey
Valentino Cassinari and Carlo A. Pagni
Harvard University Press
The problem of central pain—the phenomenon that can arise from a lesion of the central nervous system—has gradually become a subject of deeper and more systematic investigation. Close observation of examples of central pain, combined with an increased knowledge of its conduction, transmission, and conscious integration, now allow the whole topic to be approached from a much broader point of view. In their reconstruction of the entire problem of central pain, the authors present a valuable synthesis of the widely scattered literature on the subject. They bring together and appraise almost all the case studies that have been previously published and include some new case material in the appendix. Original synthetic diagrams illustrate the anatomical and functional substrate of pain conduction. The authors also present problems of clinical significance from their own experience: problems which prompted them to write this study in order to provide practical information immediately useful to all who must deal with this specialized treatment situation.
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Cerebral Herniation Syndromes and Intracranial Hypertension
Koenig, Matthew
Rutgers University Press, 2016
When the brain suffers an injury, the effects can be delayed and unpredictable. Cerebrospinal fluid can slowly build up, causing dangerously high levels of intracranial pressure (ICP), and the brain tissue can be displaced into adjacent compartments, resulting in cerebral herniation syndrome (CHS). Within the burgeoning field of neurocritical care, experts are just beginning to understand the nuanced, sometimes counterintuitive relationship between ICP and CHS.  
 
Written by leading researchers who also have extensive first-hand clinical experience treating brain injury patients, Cerebral Herniation Syndromes and Intracranial Hypertension provides an up-to-date guide to this complex aspect of neurocritical care. Drawing from expertise gained working in high-volume medical centers, the book’s contributors reveal that there is no universal metric for gauging acceptable levels of intracranial pressure. Instead, they demonstrate the best practices for offering patients individualized care, based on their specific conditions and manifest symptoms.  
 
Bringing together internationally-renowned neurocritical care experts from a variety of neurology, critical care, surgery, and neurosurgery disciplines, this volume takes a comprehensive look at a complicated issue. A concise, practical, and timely review, Cerebral Herniation Syndromes and Intracranial Hypertension offers vital information for all medical personnel concerned with improving neurocritical patient care.  
 
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Challenging Operations
Medical Reform and Resistance in Surgery
Katherine C. Kellogg
University of Chicago Press, 2011

In 2003, in the face of errors and accidents caused by medical and surgical trainees, the American Council of Graduate Medical Education mandated a reduction in resident work hours to eighty per week. Over the course of two and a half years spent observing residents and staff surgeons trying to implement this new regulation, Katherine C. Kellogg discovered that resistance to it was both strong and successful—in fact, two of the three hospitals she studied failed to make the change. Challenging Operations takes up the apparent paradox of medical professionals resisting reforms designed to help them and their patients. Through vivid anecdotes, interviews, and incisive observation and analysis, Kellogg shows the complex ways that institutional reforms spark resistance when they challenge long-standing beliefs, roles, and systems of authority.

At a time when numerous policies have been enacted to address the nation’s soaring medical costs, uneven access to care, and shortage of primary-care physicians, Challenging Operations sheds new light on the difficulty of implementing reforms and offers concrete recommendations for effectively meeting that challenge.

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Chris Gets Ear Tubes
Betty Pace
Gallaudet University Press, 1987
Chris Gets Ear Tubes explains what happens before, during, and after the surgery in language a child understands. It takes away the child’s natural fear of the unknown. The charming full-color illustrations familiarize the child with the hosptial procedures.
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Do You Really Need Surgery?
A Sensible Guide to Hysterectomy and Other Procedures for Women
Michele C. Moore, M.D., FAAFP and Caroline M. de Costa
Rutgers University Press, 2004

At last, here is a user-friendly guide to gynecologic surgery. The authors' guiding principle is that each woman for whom any kind of surgery is recommended should be well informed about the indications, the risks, and the expected results.

Using anecdotes drawn from a combined fifty years of experience, doctors Moore and de Costa provide clear and accurate information about women's anatomy, physiology, common gynecological ailments, diagnosis, alternative treatments, and, finally, full details about surgery itself. Among the surgeries discussed are removal of the uterus (hysterectomy), removal of the ovaries (oophorectomy), and removal of fibroids. The various ways of performing these procedures are examined, including minimally invasive surgery done through the laparoscope.

The authors also help the patient through the post-operative phase, revealing what to expect, how to make the recovery easier, and how to take care of yourself after the surgery. The result is a book that empowers women as they weigh their options with regard to gynecologic surgery.

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Essential Facts in Cardiovascular Medicine
Board Review and Clinical Pearls
Yeghiazarians, Yerem
Rutgers University Press, 2018
The treatment and management of cardiovascular disease has seen rapid advances in recent years; as a trainee or practitioner of cardiovascular medicine, it can be difficult to find the time to stay abreast of recent updates in information. Unlike standard exhaustive text and reference titles, Essential Facts in Cardiovascular Medicine provides the most critical facts and clinical pearls of cardiovascular medicine, in a high-yield, concise, bulleted format that can fit in your pocket. Essential Facts in Cardiovascular Medicine is the perfect guide to enhance your cardiovascular knowledge, prepare for board examinations, and improve clinical practice. 

Essential Facts in Cardiovascular Medicine covers numerous important topics from the basics of Statistics, to factoids in General Cardiology, Physical Exam, EKG, Congenital Heart Disease, Valvular Heart Disease, Heart Failure/Transplant, Acute Coronary Syndromes, Pericardial Diseases, Electrophysiology, Pharmacology, Pregnancy, Pulmonary Hypertension, Peripheral Vascular Disease, Echocardiography, Formulas, Interventional Cardiology and Cardiac Tumors.  
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Face/On
Face Transplants and the Ethics of the Other
Sharrona Pearl
University of Chicago Press, 2017
Are our identities attached to our faces? If so, what happens when the face connected to the self is gone forever—or replaced? In Face/On, Sharrona Pearl investigates the stakes for changing the face–and the changing stakes for the face—in both contemporary society and the sciences.
 
The first comprehensive cultural study of face transplant surgery, Face/On reveals our true relationships to faces and facelessness, explains the significance we place on facial manipulation, and decodes how we understand loss, reconstruction, and transplantation of the face. To achieve this, Pearl draws on a vast array of sources: bioethical and medical reports, newspaper and television coverage, performances by pop culture icons, hospital records, personal interviews, films, and military files. She argues that we are on the cusp of a new ethics, in an opportune moment for reframing essentialist ideas about appearance in favor of a more expansive form of interpersonal interaction. Accessibly written and respectfully illustrated, Face/On offers a new perspective on face transplant surgery as a way to consider the self and its representation as constantly present and evolving. Highly interdisciplinary, this study will appeal to anyone wishing to know more about critical interventions into recent medicine, makeover culture, and the beauty industry.
 
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Forgive and Remember
Managing Medical Failure, 2nd Edition
Charles L. Bosk
University of Chicago Press, 2003
On its initial publication, Forgive and Remember emerged as the definitive study of the training and lives of young surgeons. Now with an extensive new preface, epilogue, and appendix by the author, reflecting on the changes that have taken place since the book's original publication, this updated second edition of Charles L. Bosk's classic study is as timely as ever.
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From Midwives to Medicine
The Birth of American Gynecology
McGregor, Deborah K
Rutgers University Press, 1998
From Midwives to Medicine examines the development of modern medical treatment of women and the related history of women's health in the mid-1800s. McGregor looks not only at the medical figures who devised and practiced the innovative therapist, but also at the history of the patient experience in the development and the professionalization of a medical specialty. In exploring the controversial career of J. Marion Sims, "the father of gynecology," and the history of the Woman's Hospital of the State of New York, McGregor chronicles the emergence of a practice involving previously untried medical techniques and the use of experimentation on patients according to a social hierarchy based on race and sex.

Using patient records and archival material from the female governors and administrators at the hospital, From Midwives to Medicine shows how a new medical practice developed out of the changing patterns and historical experiences of childbirth, as well as out of the context of the social relations f the sexes. Sim's patients were slave women in the antebellum South, poor Irish immigrants in the industrial North, and upper-class white. Protestant, Manhattan socialites who sought help for their "hysterical" symptoms. During his career, which began in the South and flourished at the Women's Hospital in New York. Sims performed and perfected his technique to "cure" vesico-vaginal fistulas, the tears of childbirth, from which so many women suffered. But Sims achieved these successes on the operating table only after years of practicing his "silver suture" technique on unanesthetized slave women, who he believed "by the nature of their race... had a specific physiological tolerance for pain unknown to whites."
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The Healing Hand
Man and Wound in the Ancient World
Guido Majno
Harvard University Press, 1975

This journey to the beginnings of the physician’s art brings to life the civilizations of the ancient world—Egypt of the Pharaohs, Greece at the time of Hippocrates, Rome under the Caesars, the India of Ashoka, and China as Mencius knew it. Probing the documents and artifacts of the ancient world with a scientist’s mind and a detective’s eye, Guido Majno pieces together the difficulties people faced in the effort to survive their injuries, as well as the odd, chilling, or inspiring ways in which they rose to the challenge. In asking whether the early healers might have benefited their patients, or only hastened their trip to the grave, Dr. Majno uncovered surprising answers by testing ancient prescriptions in a modern laboratory.

Illustrated with hundreds of photographs, many in full color, and climaxing ten years of work, The Healing Hand is a spectacular recreation of man’s attempts to conquer pain and disease.

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A History of Organ Transplantation
Ancient Legends to Modern Practice
David Hamilton
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2012

Foreword by Clyde Barker and Thomas E. Starzl

A History of Organ Transplantation is a comprehensive and ambitious exploration of transplant surgery—which, surprisingly, is one of the longest continuous medical endeavors in history. Moreover, no other medical enterprise has had so many multiple interactions with other fields, including biology, ethics, law, government, and technology. Exploring the medical, scientific, and surgical events that led to modern transplant techniques, Hamilton argues that progress in successful transplantation required a unique combination of multiple methods, bold surgical empiricism, and major immunological insights in order for surgeons to develop an understanding of the body’s most complex and mysterious mechanisms.  Surgical progress was nonlinear, sometimes reverting and sometimes significantly advancing through luck, serendipity, or helpful accidents of nature.
      The first book of its kind, A History of Organ Transplantation examines the evolution of surgical tissue replacement from classical times to the medieval period to the present day. This well-executed volume will be useful to undergraduates, graduate students, scholars, surgeons, and the general public. Both Western and non-Western experiences as well as folk practices are included. 

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House of Pain
New and Selected Essays
Laurence Gonzales
University of Arkansas Press, 2013

Laurence Gonzales began his successful publishing career in 1989 with the publication of The Still Point and later The Hero’s Apprentice (1994), both with the University of Arkansas Press. From these collections of essays he went on to write for renowned magazines in addition to publishing several books, including the best selling Deep Survival. His journalism garnered two National Magazine Awards, and his latest nonfiction book, Surviving Survival, was named by Kirkus as one of the best books of 2012.

This new collection of essays shows us the sometimes hair-raising, sometimes heart-wrenching writing that Gonzales has become known for. This “compelling and trustworthy guide” (Booklist) takes us from a maximum-security prison to a cancer ward, from a mental institution to the World Trade Center. Among the essays included is “Marion Prison,” a National Magazine Award finalist, with its intimate view inside the most maximum security prison in America. “House of Pain” takes the reader into the life of a brain surgeon at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital, a grim world that few ever see. “Rites of Spring,” another National Magazine Award finalist, follows Gonzales and his wife on their journey through cancer, not once, but twice.

Other stories venture above the Arctic Circle, flying deep into the Alaskan wilderness among grizzly bears and trumpeter swans; explore aerobatics in high-performance aircraft; and eulogize Memphis and Miami as American cities that mourn their fates in uniquely different ways.

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Invasion of the Body
Revolutions in Surgery
Nicholas L. Tilney
Harvard University Press, 2011

In 1913, the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston admitted its first patient, Mary Agnes Turner, who suffered from varicose veins in her legs. The surgical treatment she received, under ether anesthesia, was the most advanced available at the time. At the same hospital fifty years later, Nicholas Tilney—then a second-year resident—assisted in the repair of a large aortic aneurysm. The cutting-edge diagnostic tools he used to evaluate the patient’s condition would soon be eclipsed by yet more sophisticated apparatus, including minimally invasive approaches and state-of-the-art imaging technology, which Tilney would draw on in pioneering organ transplant surgery and becoming one of its most distinguished practitioners.

In Invasion of the Body, Tilney tells the story of modern surgery and the revolutions that have transformed the field: anesthesia, prevention of infection, professional standards of competency, pharmaceutical advances, and the present turmoil in medical education and health care reform. Tilney uses as his stage the famous Boston teaching hospital where he completed his residency and went on to practice (now called Brigham and Women's). His cast of characters includes clinicians, support staff, trainees, patients, families, and various applied scientists who push the revolutions forward.

While lauding the innovations that have brought surgeons' capabilities to heights undreamed of even a few decades ago, Tilney also previews a challenging future, as new capacities to prolong life and restore health run headlong into unsustainable costs. The authoritative voice he brings to the ancient tradition of surgical invasion will be welcomed by patients, practitioners, and policymakers alike.

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Ischemic Stroke
Diagnosis and Treatment
Martin-Schild, Sheryl
Rutgers University Press, 2018
Stroke is the fifth leading cause of death in the United States and is a leading cause of adult disability and discharge from hospitals to chronic care facilities. Despite the frequency and morbidity of stroke, there is a relative paucity of “stroke experts,” such as vascular neurologists and neurocritical care physicians, to care for these patients. Clinical research in the diagnosis and treatment of stroke has grown exponentially over the past two decades resulting in a great deal of new clinical information for attending physicians to absorb. Grounded in cutting-edge and evidence-based strategies, Ischemic Stroke closes the gap in stroke care by providing a cogent and intuitive guide for all physicians caring for stroke patients.

Key topics explored cover all elements of stroke care, including examinations of: emergent evaluation of the suspected stroke patient, clinical signs and symptoms of stroke, mechanisms of ischemic stroke, neuroimaging, cardiac-based evaluation, thrombolytic therapy, endovascular therapy, critical care management, rehabilitation, cardiac arrhythmias, and structural heart disease.
 
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Kidney for Sale by Owner
Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market
Mark J. Cherry
Georgetown University Press, 2005

If most Americans accept the notion that the market is the most efficient means to distribute resources, why should body parts be excluded?

Each year thousands of people die waiting for organ transplants. Many of these deaths could have been prevented were it not for the almost universal moral hand-wringing over the concept of selling human organs. Kidney for Sale by Owner, now with a new preface, boldly deconstructs the roadblocks that are standing in the way of restoring health to thousands of people. Author and bioethicist Mark Cherry reasserts the case that health care could be improved and lives saved by introducing a regulated transplant organs market rather than by well-meant, but misguided, prohibitions.

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Leaders in Plastic Surgery
The Dingman-Grabb Era 1946-1986
Robert M. Oneal, MD, and Lauralee A. Lutz
Michigan Publishing Services, 2017
Leaders in Plastic Surgery traces the inspirational leadership of Reed O. Dingman, DDS, MD, and William C. Grabb, MD, and details the origins and growth of plastic and reconstructive surgery and the training of residents in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and the University of Michigan. It covers the years before and during the period of explosive innovations that have led the specialty to provide hope, correction, and rehabilitation to vast numbers of people suffering from a wide range of congenital abnormalities and acquired deformities. The authors, because of their long, personal association with plastic surgery in Ann Arbor, have brought to life the extensive accomplishments of the two leaders in terms of surgical techniques, surgical education, and important applied research while also documenting the many important contributions from the younger faculty and the trainees to the training program during those forty years. Many from that time frame have contributed their own memories, which has greatly enriched the documentation of an amazing history of an era past but not forgotten.
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Limited by Body Habitus
An American Fat Story
Jennifer Renee Blevins
Autumn House Press, 2019
Jennifer Renee Blevins’s debut memoir, Limited by Body Habitus: An American Fat Story, sheds light on her experiences living with the emotional and psychological struggles of taking up space in a fat-phobic world. Bringing together experiences of personal and national trauma, Blevins adeptly weaves the tale of her father’s gastric bypass surgery and subsequent prolonged health crisis with the environmental catastrophe of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Blevins looks to each of these events as a “leak” of American society’s pitfalls and shortcomings. These intertwined narratives, both disasters that could have been avoided, reveal points of failure in our systems of healthcare and environmental conservation.
 
Incorporating pieces from her life, such as medical transcripts and quotes from news programs, Blevins composes a mosaic of our modern anxieties. Even through despair, she finds hope in mending broken relationships and shows us how we can flourish as individuals and as a nation despite our struggles. Fierce and haunting, this memoir creates a space of narrative through body, selfhood, family, and country.
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The Look of a Woman
Facial Feminization Surgery and the Aims of Trans- Medicine
Eric Plemons
Duke University Press, 2017
Developed in the United States in the 1980s, facial feminization surgery (FFS) is a set of bone and soft tissue reconstructive surgical procedures intended to feminize the faces of trans- women. While facial surgery was once considered auxiliary to genital surgery, many people now find that these procedures confer distinct benefits according to the different models of sex and gender in which they intervene. Surgeons advertise that FFS not only improves a trans- woman's appearance; it allows her to be recognized as a woman by those who see her. In The Look of a Woman Eric Plemons foregrounds the narratives of FFS patients and their surgeons as they move from consultation and the operating room to postsurgery recovery. He shows how the increasing popularity of FFS represents a shift away from genital-based conceptions of trans- selfhood in ways that mirror the evolving views of what is considered to be good trans- medicine. Outlining how conflicting models of trans- therapeutics play out in practice, Plemons demonstrates how FFS is changing the project of surgical sex reassignment by reconfiguring the kind of sex that surgery aims to change.
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The Love Surgeon
A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation
Sarah B. Rodriguez
Rutgers University Press, 2020
Dr. James Burt believed women’s bodies were broken, and only he could fix them. In the 1950s, this Ohio OB-GYN developed what he called “love surgery,” a unique procedure he maintained enhanced the sexual responses of a new mother, transforming her into “a horny little house mouse.” Burt did so without first getting the consent of his patients. Yet he was allowed to practice for over thirty years, mutilating hundreds of women in the process.

It would be easy to dismiss Dr. Burt as a monstrous aberration, a modern-day Dr. Frankenstein. Yet as medical historian Sarah Rodriguez reveals, that’s not the whole story. The Love Surgeon asks tough questions about Burt’s heinous acts and what they reveal about the failures of the medical establishment: How was he able to perform an untested surgical procedure? Why wasn’t he obliged to get informed consent from his patients? And why did it take his peers so long to take action?

The Love Surgeon is both a medical horror story and a cautionary tale about the limits of professional self-regulation.
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The Making of the Unborn Patient
A Social Anatomy of Fetal Surgery
Casper, Monica J
Rutgers University Press, 1998
Winner of the 1998 C. Wright Mills Award from the Society for the Study of Social Problems

It is now possible for physicians to recognize that a pregnant woman's fetus is facing life-threatening problems, perform surgery on the fetus, and if it survives, return it to the woman's uterus to finish gestation. Although fetal surgery has existed in various forms for three decades, it is only just beginning to capture the public's imagination. These still largely experimental procedures raise all types of medical, political and ethical questions. Who is the patient? What are the technical difficulties involved in fetal surgery? How do reproductive politics seep into the operating room, and how do medical definitions and meanings flow out of medicine and into other social spheres? How are ethical issues defined in this practice and who defines them? Is fetal surgery the kind of medicine we want? What is involved in reframing fetal surgery as a women's health issue, rather than simply a pediatric concern? In this ethnographic study of the social, cultural and historical aspects of fetal surgery, Monica Casper addresses these questions. The Making of the Unborn Patient examines two important and connected events of the second half of the 20th century: the emergence of fetal surgery as a new medical specialty and the debut of the unborn patient.
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The Missing Piece
A Collection of Kidney Transplant Stories
Edited by Megan Podschlne
Michigan Publishing Services, 2018
The Missing Piece is a window into the world of kidney transplant recipients and donors.  These powerful, first-hand accounts, written by patients at Michigan Medicine, provide frank glimpses into the highs and the lows experienced by those struggling with a life-altering illness.  The contributing authors discuss the coping techniques that worked and those that did not; how they knew when it was time to consider dialysis; and, how they shared their experiences and news with family, friends, and even complete strangers in a quest for a donation from a living donor. 
 
This uplifting book contains practical advice and a helpful list of resources for patients and family members.  It is a must-read for those who are facing dialysis and/or kidney transplant and for those considering becoming a living donor.  
 
The book’s editor has dedicated this book to new patients, understanding that patient-to-patient communication is a unique and effective way to improve patient and family education.  Proceeds from this book will be used to improve the patient experience at Michigan Medicine. 
 
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Obesity Surgery
Stories Of Altered Lives
Marta Meana
University of Nevada Press, 2008
Obesity is a major national health problem, and science has been developing a number of ways to address it. The most revolutionary is surgical intervention to alter the gastrointestinal system so that less food/nutrients can be consumed and/or absorbed. People who undergo this surgery usually experience drastic weight loss and dramatic health improvements. They also discover a new sense of self and face challenges often unimaginable when they were obese.
Using in-depth, first person accounts of 33 men and women who underwent weight-loss surgery, this book elaborates on the complexities of finally getting what you wished for— the good, the bad, and the totally unexpected.
We live in a culture fascinated by physical make-overs, but no one talks about their psychological consequences. Losing a lot of weight is perhaps the most extreme make-over of all. It leaves people emotionally changed, and these changes are the heart of this book.The fascinating narratives contain important lessons for individuals considering or having had the surgery and for those who try to help them. It is simply a story of how finally getting what you’ve always wished for can be much more complicated affair than you ever imagined.
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Obesity Surgery
Stories Of Altered Lives
Marta Meana
University of Nevada Press, 2008
Obesity is a major national health problem, and science has been developing a number of ways to address it. The most revolutionary is surgical intervention to alter the gastrointestinal system so that less food/nutrients can be consumed and/or absorbed. People who undergo this surgery usually experience drastic weight loss and dramatic health improvements. They also discover a new sense of self and face challenges often unimaginable when they were obese.
Using in-depth, first person accounts of 33 men and women who underwent weight-loss surgery, this book elaborates on the complexities of finally getting what you wished for— the good, the bad, and the totally unexpected.
We live in a culture fascinated by physical make-overs, but no one talks about their psychological consequences. Losing a lot of weight is perhaps the most extreme make-over of all. It leaves people emotionally changed, and these changes are the heart of this book.The fascinating narratives contain important lessons for individuals considering or having had the surgery and for those who try to help them. It is simply a story of how finally getting what you’ve always wished for can be much more complicated affair than you ever imagined.
[more]

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A Pitch of Philosophy
Autobiographical Exercises
Stanley Cavell
Harvard University Press, 1994
This book is an invitation to the life of philosophy in the United States, as Emerson once lived it and as Stanley Cavell now lives it—in all its topographical ambiguity. Cavell talks about his vocation in connection with what he calls voice—the tone of philosophy—and his right to take that tone, and to describe an anecdotal journey toward the discovery of his own voice.
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Probably Someday Cancer
Genetic Risk and Preventative Mastectomy
Kim Horner
University of North Texas Press, 2019

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Replacement Parts
The Ethics of Procuring and Replacing Organs in Humans
Arthur L. Caplan, James J. McCartney, and Daniel Reid, Editors
Georgetown University Press, 2016

In Replacement Parts, internationally recognized bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan and coeditors James J. McCartney and Daniel P. Reid assemble seminal writings from medicine, philosophy, economics, and religion that address the ethical challenges raised by organ transplantation. Caplan's new lead essay explains the shortfalls of present policies. From there, book sections take an interdisciplinary approach to fundamental issues like the determination of death and the dead donor rule; the divisive case of using anencephalic infants as organ donors; the sale of cadaveric or live organs; possible strategies for increasing the number of available organs, including market solutions and the idea of presumed consent; and questions surrounding transplant tourism and "gaming the system" by using the media to gain access to organs.

Timely and balanced, Replacement Parts is a first-of-its-kind collection aimed at surgeons, physicians, nurses, and other professionals involved in this essential lifesaving activity that is often fraught with ethical controversy.

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Richard Selzer and the Rhetoric of Surgery
Charles M. Anderson
Southern Illinois University Press, 1989

Anderson provides the context from which Selzer’s writing grows and a concept of language adequate to his purposes and accomplishments. He takes a careful look at Selzer’s writing to demonstrate that these abstract considerations do tell us why a surgeon would write. The works Anderson examines are "Jonah and the Whale" (an important early short story) and the first three essays in Mortal Lessons. These examples show the reader exactly how the symbols of literature interact directly with the world and the everyday communications of both writer and reader. According to Anderson, Mortal Lessons is also Selzer’s most artistic statement of his own sense of why and how he became a writer.

Selzer’s books include Rituals of Surgery, Mortal Lessons, Confessions of a Knife, Letters to a Young Doctor, and Taking the World in for Repairs.

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Small
Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery
Catherine Musemeche
Dartmouth College Press, 2014
As a pediatric surgeon, Catherine Musemeche operates on the smallest of human beings, manipulates organs the size of walnuts, and uses sutures as thin as hairs to resolve matters of life or death. Working in the small space of a premature infant’s chest or abdomen allows no margin for error. It is a world rife with emotion and risk. Small takes readers inside this rarefied world of pediatric medicine, where children and newborns undergo surgery to resolve congenital defects or correct the damages caused by accidents and disease. It is an incredibly high-stakes endeavor, nerve-wracking and fascinating. Small: Life and Death on the Front Lines of Pediatric Surgery is a gripping story about a still little-known frontier. In writing about patients and their families, Musemeche recounts the history of the developing field of pediatric surgery—so like adult medicine in many ways, but at the same time utterly different. This is a field guide to the state of the art and science of operating on the smallest human beings, the hurts and maladies that afflict them, and the changing nature of medicine in America today, told by an exceptionally gifted surgeon and writer.
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Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck
Parviz Janfaza M.D.
Harvard University Press, 2001

Surgical Anatomy of the Head and Neck was immediately hailed as indispensable when it was first published in 2001. In demand ever since, this classic surgical atlas—packed with more than 700 exceptional drawings, 537 of them in full color, by an internationally noted medical illustrator—is now available again, with an extensive new index, after years of being out of print.

Here is a surgeon’s-eye view of all anatomic details, from the upper thorax to the crown. Ideal for both surgery and test preparation, this volume features special boxed sections that focus on the surgical significance of each anatomical structure. Every illustration is clearly labeled with key anatomic landmarks, and a user-friendly design allows quick reference. This volume is an invaluable resource for surgeons, residents, and medical students.

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Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
Edited by Deepak K. Kalaskar, Peter E. Butler, and Shadi Ghali
University College London, 2016
Written by experts from London’s renowned Royal Free Hospital, Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery offers a comprehensive overview of the vast topic of reconstructive plastic surgery and its various subspecialties for introductory plastic surgery and surgical science courses. The book comprises five sections covering the fundamental principles of plastic surgery, cancer, burns and trauma, paediatric plastic surgery and aesthetic surgery, and covers the breadth of knowledge that students need to further their career in this exciting field. Additional coverage of areas in which reconstructive surgery techniques are called upon includes abdominal wall reconstruction, ear reconstruction and genital reconstruction. A chapter on aesthetic surgery includes facial aesthetic surgery and blepharoplasty, aesthetic breast surgery, body contouring and the evolution of hair transplantation. The broad scope of this volume and attention to often neglected specialisms such as military plastic surgery make this a unique contribution to the field. Heavily illustrated throughout, Textbook of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery is essential reading for anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of this exciting field. This book was produced as part of JISC's Institution as e-Textbook Publisher project. Find out more at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/rd/projects/institution-as-e-textbook-publisher
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Transplanting Care
Shifting Commitments in Health and Care in the United States
Heinemann, Laura L.
Rutgers University Press, 2016
The sudden call, the race to the hospital, the high-stakes operation—the drama of transplant surgery is well known. But what happens before and after the surgery? In Transplanting Care, Laura L. Heinemann examines the daily lives of midwestern organ transplant patients and those who care for them, from pretransplant preparations through to the long posttransplant recovery.
 
Heinemann points out that as efforts to control healthcare costs gain urgency—and as new surgical techniques, drug therapies, and home medical equipment advance—most of the transplant process now takes place at home, among kin. Indeed, the transplant system effectively depends on unpaid care labor, typically provided by spouses, parents, siblings, and others. Drawing on scores of interviews with patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals, Heinemann follows a variety of patients and loved ones as they undertake this uncertain and strenuous “transplant journey.” She also shows how these home-based caregiving efforts take place within the larger economic and political context of a paucity of resources for patients and caregivers, who ultimately must surmount numerous obstacles. The author concludes that the many snags encountered by transplant patients and loved ones make a clear case for more comprehensive health and social policy that treats care as a necessarily shared public responsibility.  
 
An illuminating look at the long transplant journey, Transplanting Care also offers broader insight into how we handle infirmity in America—and how we might do a better job of doing so. 
 
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Under the Knife
Cosmetic Surgery, Boundary Work, and the Pursuit of the Natural Fake
Samantha Kwan and Jennifer Graves
Temple University Press, 2020

Most women who elect to have cosmetic surgery want a “natural” outcome—a discrete alteration of the body that appears unaltered. Under the Knife examines this theme in light of a cultural paradox. Whereas women are encouraged to improve their appearance, there is also a stigma associated with those who do so via surgery.   

Samantha Kwan and Jennifer Graves reveal how women negotiate their “unnatural”—but hopefully (in their view) natural-looking—surgically-altered bodies. Based on in-depth interviews with 46 women who underwent cosmetic surgery to enhance their appearance, the authors investigate motivations for surgery as well as women’s thoughts about looking natural after the procedures. Under the Knife dissects the psychological and physical strategies these women use to manage the expectations, challenges, and disappointments of cosmetic surgery while also addressing issues of agency and empowerment. It shows how different cultural intersections can produce varied goals and values around body improvement.

Under the Knife highlights the role of deep-seated yet contradictory gendered meanings about women’s bodies, passing, and boundary work. The authors also consider traditional notions of femininity and normalcy that trouble women’s struggle to preserve an authentic moral self.

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A User’s Guide to Bypass Surgery
Ted Klein
Ohio University Press, 1996

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Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics
A Virtue Approach to Craniotomy and Tubal Pregnancies
Martin Rhonheimer
Catholic University of America Press, 2009
Vital Conflicts in Medical Ethics by renowned Swiss philosopher Martin Rhonheimer considers some of the most difficult and disputed questions in Catholic moral theology
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The Woman in the Surgeon's Body
Joan Cassell
Harvard University Press, 2000

Surgery is the most martial and masculine of medical specialties. The combat with death is carried out in the operating room, where the intrepid surgeon challenges the forces of destruction and disease. What, then, if the surgeon is a woman? Anthropologist Joan Cassell enters this closely guarded arena to explore the work and lives of women practicing their craft in what is largely a man's world.

Cassell observed thirty-three surgeons in five North American cities over the course of three years. We follow these women through their grueling days: racing through corridors to make rounds, perform operations, hold office hours, and teach residents. We hear them, in their own words, discuss their training and their relations with patients, nurses, colleagues, husbands, and children.

Do these women differ from their male colleagues? And if so, do such differences affect patient care? The answers Cassell uncovers are as complex and fascinating as the issues she considers. A unique portrait of the day-to-day reality of these remarkable women, The Woman in the Surgeon's Body is an insightful account of how being female influences the way the surgeon is perceived by colleagues, nurses, patients, and superiors--and by herself.

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Your Transplant Adventure
A Kids Guide to Organ Transplant
Tanya Smith
Michigan Publishing Services, 2018
This picture book was created for young children who are in need of a solid organ transplant.  It was developed by two dedicated Social Workers at the University of Michigan Transplant Center to give these children and their families something to put them more at ease with the organ transplant process and to help them understand that they are not alone.

The bright and colorful illustrations appeal to a child’s eye.  Simple text accompanies each illustration.  A direct question (e.g. “Will I have stitches or a scar?”) on one page is answered on the facing page, beneath an original illustration (e.g. “Your doctor will use stitches or a special kind of glue to help your body heal from the surgery. After the stitches come out, you will have a scar. This will always remind you of how brave you were!”).

This book is the perfect accompaniment for young children who may need a transplant, as well as for siblings and other family members who have questions and would appreciate some assistance on how to talk about the transplant process.
 
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