Open Heart
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- ¥1,200
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- ¥1,200
発行者による作品情報
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Neugeboren, a 60-year-old writer (Imagining Robert), had assumed that he was in great physical shape without risk factors for heart disease. When he experienced shortness of breath and pain between his shoulder blades, these symptoms did not alarm his personal physician. However, after several lengthy cross-country telephone conversations with Rich, a Brooklyn high school friend and cardiologist living in California, it became clear that Neugeboren had a serious coronary disease and Rich insisted that he be hospitalized immediately. With the help of three other high school buddies, Jerry, Arthur and Phil, all prominent physicians, Rich guided Neugeboren through the process of bypass surgery, performed in the nick of time. In addition to his successful operation, Neugeboren credits the support and love he received from these four men with saving his life. This well-crafted and expressive memoir recounts the extensive conversations Neugeboren held separately with his physician friends after he recovered. Deeply committed and working in different fields of medicine, these doctors describe the frustrations inherent in managed care that cause them to rely so heavily on technology and testing rather than spending time listening to and learning from their patients. In the end, Neugeboren, convinced that the patient will provide the diagnosis if the doctor listens, presents a thoughtful rumination on the art of diagnosis and healing.
