Knit Sisters

My energy level this evening is not what one might hope, given my age and general level of fitness, and it is all because I made a very, very bad error last night involving my “bedtime reading.”

Lately, I’ve become obsessed with popular books written by doctors about the medical profession. My own dissertation research has a history of medicine/history of public health thread, my grandfather was a doctor, and I am generally fascinated with how the medical profession operates (no pun intended), so these books are a natural draw.

First I blazed through Pauline Chen’s Final Exam, about how poorly doctors and modern, scientific medicine deal with mortality and the dying patient. Very nicely crafted. Then I turned to Sherwin Nuland’s How We Die. (Keep reading this genre of books and trust me, you will notice a thematic pattern developing. And alarming thematic pattern…) Also a very interesting book in spite of Nuland’s tendency to veer nauseatingly into the realm of the maudlin from time to time.

I only accept the maudlin when it has to do with dogs.

Hey, you wanna stuffed goose? I happen to have one right here.

All this prepared me, or so I thought, for Atul Gawande’s Complications, the first of his two books about doctoring. The second just came out in hardback and is called Better.

As in, “You better not read this right before you go to bed.”

Atul Gawande is an astoundingly accomplished person, the kind of guy who makes you wonder what it is you do with your time, really, because you sure as shootin’ aren’t wringing as much achievement and just downright excellence out of every day as my man Atul. Not only is he a general and endocrine surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, he is also an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School.

His Wikipedia entry coolly notes that in addition to these prestigious professional posts, Atul “has written extensively on medicine and public health for The New Yorker magazine and the online magazine Slate. He has also written for New England Journal of Medicine. His essays have appeared in The Best American Essays 2002 and The Best American Science Writing 2002. His book, Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science was a National Book Award finalist. In 2006 he was named a MacArthur fellow.”

A MacArthur fellow. A recipient of a so-called “Genius Grant.”

That has to feel good. I wish someone would certify me as a genius.

I knit this sweater AND I’m writing a dissertation. Plus I am an amateur dog trainer and I make a very fine Jell-O salad. And did I mention that I routinely and uncomplainingly perform feats of strength like removing sunken paving stones from the yard assisted only by a shovel and a “can-do” attitude?

It’s hard to explain why I have been overlooked by the committee year after year, but you know how political these things can be.

But I digress. Let’s just say that I admire Dr. Gawande and I think his first book is quite well-written, but it is, how shall I put this?, unsparing in its use of medical detail.

Knitting detail. See, I know from detail.

You may remember that medical details are not something that I tolerate especially well. How poorly do I tolerate this kind of information? Well, I once actually fainted when a friend told me in detail about her experience of giving birth to her daughter. And you will note that I myself have no children of my own today. Just coincidence? I don’t think so.

Moving on, however, I nonetheless cannot stop reading Gawande’s book, although I learned quickly not to try to read it on my lunch break. But last night as I settled in for my bedtime reading, I thought, “What could be the harm? This is so fascinating!”

Enter the chapter entitled The case of the red leg. The case of the red leg involved a woman in her early twenties who comes to Gawande’s hospital with a red leg and to all appearances, a skin infection called cellulitis. But Gawande, being a genius and all, has a bad feeling about her red leg. A very bad feeling.

He and the other docs convince her to have the tissue biopsied and they find—brace yourselves—that she actually has necrotizing fasciitis. Yeah, the flesh-eating bacteria! Incredibly rare, incredibly dangerous, often deadly.

I don’t know about you, but…FLESH-EATING BACTERIA? Oh my God!

I should have quit reading right there. What was I thinking? Instead, I forged ahead, reading about how they decided not to amputate her leg (the standard treatment…I mean, that’s how bad these flesh-eating bacteria are, people!) and instead did four nightmarish surgeries to debride (a more genteel word for “ruthlessly cut out”) all the muscle and tissue in her leg that the bacteria had destroyed.

You can read the details for yourself. I would even go so far as to recommend this book to you.

Just take my advice: don’t read it after 4 p.m.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 12th, 2007 at 10:22 pm and is filed under Heavy sweaters, Minnie. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.