The Emergency Room: Lives Saved and Lost - Doctors Tell Their Stories - Hardcover

Sachs MD, Dan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0316765929 ISBN 13: 9780316765923

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 1996

Synopsis

At turns hair-raising and hilarious, a unique collection of thirty dramatic, true stories of doctors coping with crises in the emergency room includes pieces by such professional writers as Ethan Canin, Perry Klass, and Richard Selzer.

About this title

From the Back Cover

From high drama to bitter irony, this one-of-a-kind collection gathers thirty-one extraordinary true stories of doctors on the hospital's front lines. Here is the chance to be on the other side of the swinging doors, to go behind the drawn curtains, to experience the chaos of an emergency room, the clamor of voices, the pulse-quickening excitement, and the hair-trigger decisions that can save a life. Meet the young woman who comes to the E.R. to have her stomach pumped, claiming to have swallowed an entire bottle of Tylenol, only to have her doctor discover that she is bulimic, fresh off a chocolate binge. Share the agony of the doctor desperately trying to revive a man whose heart has stopped but whose hands keep moving. And see what happens to the mechanic who is rushed into the E.R. with a steel rod sticking out of his neck. Full of pain, hope, and profound relief, these unforgettable stories recount the most intimate and terrifying moments of our existence and offer a rare glimpse into the minds and hearts of the healers who dedicate their lives to saving others.

Reviews

Thirty-one real-life emergency room dramas--some horrifying, some amusing, some heartrending--told by doctors with a definite flair for storytelling. Editor Sachs, himself an emergency room resident at a Cook County, Ill., hospital, has rounded up an impressive crew of over two dozen writing doctors, among them essayist Richard Selzer; columnist Barry Pollack, who wrote episodes of Trapper John, M.D.; Samuel Shem, pseudonymous author of the very funny novel House of God; and David Felshuh, whose play Ms. Evers Boys was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Consequently, this collection's pieces are more consistently well-written than the mixed bag of Mark Brown's recent Emergency! True Tales from the Nation's ERs (1995). Written mostly as first-person narratives, these well-crafted stories often reveal as much about the physician as about the patient. In Selzer's brief story of stitching up a police-inflicted gash in the forehead of a huge drunken black man, the real subject is Selzer's anger--at the man (whose ears he sews to the stretcher to make him lie still), at the police, and finally at himself. One piece called ``Student Doctor'' shows a painfully nervous medical student facing her first patient, an encounter that, happily, both survive. Perhaps the most nightmarish story is one called ``Stump,'' in which the patient is a man who, while trying to commit suicide, succeeded only in blowing his face off. We are never told whether he lived or died, but we know what outcome the emergency room physician hoped for. With the continuing popularity of TV dramas featuring emergency room action, this strong collection of true and memorable tales from the front lines of medicine should find its niche. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

The doctors who contribute to this collection know how to frame a dramatic story, since many of them?Ethan Canin, Susan Mates and Michael Palmer, among others?have published fiction. Sachs, an emergency-room resident in Chicago, shows his shrewdness in selecting such gut-wrenching pieces as one about the teenage mother who scalds her baby to punish its father for not staying home, and the ironic story of an elderly woman being examined in an ER after being raped when the rapist turns up there for treatment of scratches. One piece places us in a ghetto hospital during a shoot-out; another takes us on rounds with a doctor who recalls his medical mistakes. Then there is the tale of the teenage gang member with a bullet wound who flees the hospital before he has recovered, intent on revenge; and of another teenager who smuggles drugs by swallowing balloons filled with cocaine. Not all the pieces are interesting, and some are egocentric, but overall the collection will satisfy those addicted to TV medical series.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This is a collection of true-life emergency-room experiences as told by 31 physician authors, such as Samuel Shem (The House of God, Dell, 1981) and Perri Klass (Baby Doctor, LJ 6/1/92). Each story in its own way reveals as much about the practitioners of emergency medicine as it does about the individual patient's crisis. The small triumphs, the gnawing frustrations, and the endless ebb and flow of the sick and dying are all illuminated in these daily dramas, which are played out in sometimes overcrowded, understaffed, and underfunded facilities. Unlike the vignettes of Emergency!: True Stories from the Nation's E.R.s (LJ 1/96), these longer selections reflect their authors' writing skills, sometimes giving this reader a sense of O. Henry by way of M.A.S.H. For health collections.?Anne C. Tomlin, Auburn Memorial Hospital Lib., N.Y.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The 27 doctors who wrote the pieces collected were already experienced writers, so this is not another graphic ER expose. Some of its stories do require a strong stomach but reward readers with perceptive accounts of relationships, careful use of language, and vivid physical and mental images. Richard Seltzer tells about the drunken strongman whose ears he had to sew to the stretcher. Michael Palmer discusses the humiliation and the learning he experienced on his first day as an intern. The longest story (20 pages), David Feldshuh's "Are You Satisfied, Thomas Becket?" begins with an auto mechanic with a metal rod driven into his neck and ends with a newly hatched doctor perching on a low stool to clip an elderly patient's toenails. Physicians, surgeons, and psychiatrists all contribute humanely to this delightful oasis in the often windy desert of front-line medical reporting. William Beatty

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316765929
• ISBN 13: 9780316765923
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272