"Once I heard a transplant surgeon reprimand a resident for talking 
too long with a patient when there were so many others to see. 
'Save lives first, answer questions later,' he said. Patients and 
families acknowledged the truth in that statement. The surgeons 
were so busy jetting through the night to retrieve organs, then 
standing on their feet in the operating room to transplant them, then 
rounding to make certain their patients' medications were effective, 
that they couldn't really afford to invest time or energy in conversation. 
Still, understanding why the transplant team members were often so 
insensitive did not eradicate patients' hurt and resentment. I remember 
one person commenting with great bitterness, 'My doctor knows what 
my liver looks like, but not my face.'"—Lee Gutkind, from the Introduction

In these often intense and searing personal essays, a lawyer 
describes her seesawing emotions over a misdiagnosis of what she 
was told was an inoperable tumor—and her anger at her physician's 
cavalier attitude about the mistake; a physician formerly employed by 
an HMO rails at the accepted practice of managed care organizations 
finding legal loopholes to trump a patient's needs; a physician wrestles 
with the idea of doctors policing themselves, knowing he is powerless 
in the face of an incompetent colleague.

An expansion of a special issue of the journal Creative Nonfiction, 
this volume of essays by patients and their caretakers, physicians, and 
health care providers is intended to serve as a foundation for future 
dialogue and a means to begin to heal the wounds in our health care 
system.

The accompanying 80-minute audio CD contains three of the essays 
read by actors and a panel discussion of the ethical dimension of the 
issues raised.

"Pain and cancer, death and depression, are our collective adversaries. We 
are all being helped and, unfortunately, hurt by the health care system."
—Lee Gutkind

_________________________________________________________

LEE GUTKIND is the founder and editor of Creative Nonfiction. He 
teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh 
and is a prolific author whose diverse works include Forever Fat: Essays 
by the Godfather; The Best Seat in Baseball, but You Have to Stand: The 
Game as Umpires See It; Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ 
Transplantation; and Stuck in Time: The Tragedy of Childhood Mental 
Illness. He has edited many collections, including A View from the 
Divide: Creative Nonfiction on Health and Science.


Medical Humanities Series, Thomas Mayo, series editor