The Sky Was Falling
A Young Surgeon's Story of Bravery, Survival, and Hope
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER
The dramatic, unforgettable, and ultimately cathartic diary of a young pediatric surgeon and mother working on the front lines as the COVID-19 pandemic hit one of New York City’s busiest hospitals.
In the spring of 2020, many of us were sequestered in our homes, attempting to teach our children and learn to bake while the pings of news alerts and wails of sirens reminded us of the devastation outside. Dr. Cornelia Griggs’s experience was nothing like ours.
A pediatric surgery fellow in New York City, Griggs was entering the final victory lap at the end of nine grueling years of training. She was set for a big graduation celebration and looking forward to spending some real time with her husband and two toddlers.
When COVID-19 arrived, Griggs initially encouraged her friends and family not to panic. But as mysterious cases began showing up in the hospital, and then hospital supplies started disappearing from shelves, she couldn’t hold back the feeling that this was going to be worse than she had thought. Out of frustration and fear, she penned a startling op-ed in The New York Times that went, for lack of a better word, viral. The piece was read by over a million people, and Griggs appeared on CNN.
Now, she is completing her story. The Sky Was Falling is her day-by-day account of the staggering case numbers, dwindling respirator supply, and lack of clarity on how to treat this new disease. Harrowing and deeply personal, it reads like an all-too-real white-knuckle thriller and describes how healthcare professionals went beyond what they thought they were capable of to heal their patients, and themselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pediatric surgeon Griggs shares her frantic experiences during the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic in this poignant debut memoir. Griggs was months away from completing a New York City surgical fellowship in early 2020, just before hospitals started to fill with Covid patients. Shortages in personal protective equipment for healthcare workers led her to send her children out of state, and to publish a widely read March 2020 op-ed in the New York Times that urged the public to share their PPE. Much of her account is focused on the daily quagmires of the early pandemic, as when Griggs commends a pediatric ICU nurse who disregarded protocols to soothe an infant who needed to be touched, or when she denounces coworkers for stealing masks from the hospital for outside use. Interspersed throughout are gripping passages about performing complicated surgeries on young patients and flashbacks illuminating Griggs's path to becoming a surgeon. Her well-calibrated combination of polemic and personal history will keep readers glued to the page. It's a welcome addition to the shelf of medical memoirs about the peak of Covid-19.
