Synopses & Reviews
The shared qualities of friendship and the healing arts are the subject of this riveting memoir of one man's battle with heart disease. When, in February 1999, Jay Neugeboren discovered he needed emergency quintuple-bypass surgery, he embarked on a journey that just began on the operating table. At sixty, he was the picture of health, swimming a mile a day and playing tennis and basketball regularly -- often with teenagers. How could he possibly have heart disease? But as he soon came to know, the difference between being healthy and being sick, and between receiving good care and receiving misdiagnoses, can be alarmingly narrow.
Fortunately, on his side were four lifelong friends, all prominent physicians -- a cardiologist, a psychologist, a neurologist, and one of the world's pioneers in AIDS medicine -- who helped him sift through the contradictory advice and the uneasiness one feels when life lies in the hands of strangers who are doctors. Guiding him through the system and relying on the strength of their childhood bonds, born from their Brooklyn upbringing, his friends in effect saved his life and opened his eyes to the ways -- good, bad, miraculous, and at times chilling -- in which medicine is practiced in the United States today.
In this book, Jay sets out to understand how and why he nearly died, and to find out what we know -- and don't know -- about disease and illness in general. Joined by his friends, each of whom reflects on his own life as a physician, Jay examines the faith many of us place in the advanced technologies of modern medicine and how that often distracts us from the most fundamental health care tool -- an engaged physician who listens and cares. What he discovers, in part, is that the qualities that lie at the heart of friendship also define what we hope for, and are losing, in our doctors.
At a time when our health care system continues to disappoint, Open Heart will resonate with every patient who has been shuttled between specialists, with every physician who has faced impossible time constraints and technologies, and with everyone who has helped a loved one through the maze of health care choices.Clear, compelling, comic, and inspiring, Open Heart is a story that will open eyes and hearts -- a memoir every patient, doctor, and care provider will want to read.
Review
"A skillful blending of personal experience and public concerns."
Review
"This memoir...is strongest as a testimonial to friendship."
Review
"A skillful blending of personal experience and public concerns." Kirkus Reviews
"This memoir...is strongest as a testimonial to friendship." Boston Globe
"In this inspiring book, Neugeboren thoughtfully recounts his emerency bypass sugery and ruminates on the state of doctor-patient relationships..." Ploughshares
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [349]-352) and index.
About the Author
JAY NEUGEBOREN is the acclaimed author of several works of fiction and nonfiction, including Imagining Robert, recently adapted into a film that is scheduled to air on a national TV network in 2003, and Transforming Madness.
Table of Contents
Contents 1 How Little We Know 1 2 All the Time in the World 15 3 The Consolation of Diagnosis 24 4 Its Not Viral, Goddamnit! 49 5 Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Times Five 75 6 The Ponce de León Thing 86 7 Listen to the Patient 102 8 They Saved My Life But . . . 120 9 One Year Later 143 10 In Friends We Trust 158 11 So Why Did I Become a Doctor? 177 12 A Safe Place 199 13 Its Not the Disease 215 14 The Patients Story 235 15 Natural Selection 267 16 The Prepared Heart 281 Acknowledgments 305 Notes 307 Bibliography 349 Index 353