Twelve Patients
Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital (The Inspiration for the NBC
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4.2 • 10 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
In the spirit of Oliver Sacks and the inspiration for the NBC drama New Amsterdam, this memoir from a Medical Director of Bellevue Hospital looks poignantly at patients' lives, highlighting the complex mind-body connection.
"As intensely involving as any scripted for a television medical drama." —The New York Daily News
Twelve Patients shows the plights of twelve very different patients—from dignitaries at the nearby UN, to supermax prisoners at Riker's Island, to illegal immigrants, and Wall Street tycoons.
Dr. Eric Manheimer is not only the medical director of the country's oldest public hospital—he is also a patient. As the book unfolds, the narrator is diagnosed with cancer and is forced to wrestle with the end of his own life even as he struggles to save the lives of others.
"This book is not only brilliant, it is deeply moving, and as socially and politically important as anything I have read over the past ten years." —James F. Gilligan, psychiatrist and author
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bellevue's former medical director offers unusual clarity, empathy, and insight in these stories from the bedside at the nation's oldest hospital and, Manheimer notes, perhaps its most famous public one. Yet Manheimer offers far more than remarkable medical dramas: he blends each patient's personal experiences with their social implications. Juan, an addict with a long criminal record, shows indomitable strength in battling cancer in the hospital's prison unit as the hospital presses for his compassionate release. For Manheimer, his case illustrates a broken prison system. For Tanisha, an emotionally damaged teen, one caring foster family gives her a last shot at happiness and demonstrates the problems of psych treatment for kids. Equally gripping tales include that of addict Arnie, a former Wall Street success story whose demons nearly destroyed his son, and whose slow slog to recovery highlights the nature of forgiveness. But perhaps the most moving tale of all is Manheimer's own as a cancer patient, he learns far more about despair and hope than most physicians can imagine. Manheimer offers a window onto a unique hospital and the wisdom of a healer who tends with equal skill to patients and the world.
