ONE DOCTOR

Packende narrative non-fiction, liest sich wie ein Roman!

Brenden Reilly, a distinguished internist in the USA, who was profiled at length by Malcolm Gladwell in BLINK. ONE DOCTOR: Close Calls, Cold Cases, and the Mysteries of Medicine is a riveting first-person narrative – a true story that reads like a novel – written in three parts. The opening section describes Reilly's present-day, moment-to-moment experience with patients, families and medical staff in the inpatient wards, emergency department and intensive care unit of NewYork Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, a renowned teaching institution currently featured in ABC's new television series “NY Med.” The second part of the story describes Reilly's work a generation ago as a small-town primary care doctor at the Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, then and now a national leader in efforts to make health care more accountable and patient-centered. The final part returns to present-day where Reilly's past and present experiences as a doctor come together to help him struggle through new crises with patients, including both of his 90-year old parents. Each of the book's parts contains stories about many different patients, all of whom face their own challenges and teach Reilly lessons about medicine and life. In the end, the reader sees, hears, even feels how and why medicine has changed over the past few decades, both for the better and for the worse. A cautionary tale, The Dinosaur's Mistress suggests how the reader can help to preserve what is great about American medicine and help to improve what isn't. Interspersed with his story – it is many stories, really, integrated into one – Reilly has written a series of brief commentaries which complement and illuminate it. These commentaries address many of the very real personal, psychological, ethical, political and financial issues which arise (for both patients and doctors) in the course of Reilly's story. Seamlessly, then, this book combines intimate storytelling reminiscent of Abraham Verghese with savvy “policy” analysis similar to Atul Gawande's. Admirers of both of these authors will enjoy this book, although its unique style and perspective is very different from theirs. The Dinosaur's Mistress undoubtedly will find a wide audience, appealing not only to fans of “medical writers” like Oliver Sacks, Rebecca Skloot and Siddhartha Mukherjee but also to many other readers who simply want to engross themselves in a captivating story filled with remarkable people and events, past and present. In the final book will be included End Notes to clarify facts, ideas or medical terms which may be unfamiliar to some readers. However, as you will see, this book is an “easy read” even without the End Notes, itself noteworthy for a book about sophisticated, high-tech medical care. Reilly is a gifted, even poetic writer but his ability to make complex situations and ideas make sense and come alive on the page is his greatest accomplishment in this book.