Gifts from the Poor
What the World’s Patients Taught One Doctor About Healing
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
For more than four decades, surgeon and educator Glenn Geelhoed has taken medical missions to the poorest parts of the globe to treat patients at no cost and train locals to dispense care. Drawn from indelible memories, personal papers, and Geelhoed’s daily journals, Gifts from the Poor takes readers along on his journey. Whether he is stitching wounds, delivering babies, mentoring younger colleagues, or challenging destructive cultural practices, Geelhoed constantly discovers the power and dignity of each individual.
From solid, Midwestern beginnings, Geelhoed developed a profound drive to explore the world. What he found both thrilled and goaded him, and shaped a career in which he jousted with medical establishments, confronted corruption, and followed his own instincts. Geelhoed exposes the true mechanics of foreign medical aid and development and proposes game-changing alternatives to the status quo. Most of all, he advocates an upside-down approach to international medical service in which the educated healer gathers a wealth of wisdom from the poorest patients.
A self-described “hunter-gatherer” whose interests range far beyond his profession, Geelhoed takes readers outside the medical tent to experience adventures in some of the world’s harshest environments. His exploits as a marathon runner, photographer, and hunter add an unexpected dimension to his portraits of life on the edge.
An inspiring tale of compassion, conviction and grit, Gifts from the Poor is Geelhoed’s invitation to join him in healing a wounded world. His determination and energy will empower you in your own life’s journey.
All proceeds to be donated to the Medical Mission Hall of Fame Foundation.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Surgeon, teacher, and medical volunteer Geelhoed thrives on international missions most others avoid situations a colleague described as fraught with "feeble capacity, extremely limited resources, a very tiny cadre of dedicated people against overwhelming odds." In his inspiring as-told-to chronicle of courage and hope (with extensive excerpts from his notes), the intrepid doctor takes readers along on his extraordinary missions in Africa, Asia, the South Pacific, and Central and South America. Biography and medical adventure are stitched together as Geelhoed recollects incidents like the night he sang his way through a blackout while continuing to do surgery. Neff emerges as a saint with feet of clay: a messy divorce and anguished child-custody feud haunt him, and a paper, published in Nutrition, arguing that hypothyroidism conferred adaptive advantages and thus should go untreated sparked a major medical ethics debate. But Geelhoed's commitment to aiding the world's neediest should inspire not just idealistic youth but even jaded veterans who may have forgotten why they chose the healing arts in the first place. 16 pages of color photos; b&w photos.
