Prescribed Reading, Alzheimers, NY Times June 2021

Prescribed Reading

Turning to Books to Grasp the Most Ungraspable Disease

By Sandeep Jauhar
NY Times, June 17, 2021 

Dr. Jauhar wites: "For a condition that is so ubiquitous and so feared, good books on dementia are surprisingly hard to find. Some of the best, I’ve come to learn, deal with particular symptoms, like memory loss, rather than the disease itself." See: Rx Jauhar.

This is a good article, but I disagree.  There are lots of good books about dementia.  See sections on this blog under the categories of dementia and Alzheimers and also the ame sections on MedFlix.

Shuggie Bain

 by Douglas Stuart     

Winner of the 2020 Booker Prize

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh “Shuggie” Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher’s policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city’s notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings.

This is a heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction.

It reminded me of the memoir Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt.

About

 

Welcome to BooksRx

 

Patients are accustomed to leave a doctor’s office with a prescription in hand. But, the prescription need not to be for drugs alone.   BooksRx is a collection of books, web sites, articles and multimedia resources that will help patients, families and care givers to understand the common and sometimes obscure illnesses that flesh and spirit are heir to.

There are two types of resources.  Those which try to explain a disorder and focus on the scientific or technical aspects of a condition and its treatment; and those which deal with the effects of the illness on a life lived.  We will catalog both, but our lists will include more from the latter category.

Recommending books is like entering a minefield, since physicians, patients and families will have strong opinions both positive and negative.  What we offer is a smorgasbord that curious can sample.

This, after all, is Bibliotherapy.  The renown physician, William Osler, wrote, “Often the best part of [a physician’s] work will have nothing to do with powders or potions.”  Resource material is invaluable to patients as they strive to learn more about their health and disease.  Not all patients will want to join their caregivers in the quest for understanding.  BooksRx will help those who desire more information to be better informed and equipped to make important choices.

Also see:

Pathographies: These are illness narratives and this genre have become increasingly popular over the past few decades.  This blog contains references to illness narratives that I have found helpful.

MedFlix is a humane medicine and film blog. 

 

Born to Walk

Born to Walk: The Transformative Power of a Restorative Act (2018)

by Dan Rubenstein

 From Amazon: "The humble act of putting one foot in front of the other transcends age, geography, culture, and class and is one of the most economical and environmentally responsible modes of transit. Yet with our modern fixation on speed, this healthy pedestrian activity has been largely left behind.

 

At a personal and professional crossroads, writer, editor, and obsessive walker Dan Rubinstein traveled throughout the U.S., U.K., and Canada to walk with people who saw the act not only as a form of transportation and recreation, but also as a path to a better world. There are no magic-bullet solutions to modern epidemics like obesity, anxiety, alienation, and climate change. But what if there is a simple way to take a step in the right direction? Combining fascinating reportage, eye-opening research, and Rubinstein’s own discoveries, Born to Walk explores how far this ancient habit can take us and how much repair is within range, and guarantees that you’ll never again take walking for granted."

Finding Chika A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family

By Mitch Albom

 

Audible Original: Performed by Mitch Albom with Chika’s voice featured throughout.  Free to Audible users.  It's also available in print form.

 

Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince.

 

With no children of their own, the 40-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. Chika’s arrival makes a quick impression. Brave and self-assured, even as a three-year-old, she delights the other kids and teachers. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says "no one in Haiti can help you with." (Diffuse Intrinsic Pontine Glioma (DIPG))

 

Mitch and Janine bring Chika to Detroit, hopeful that American medical care can soon return her to her homeland. Instead, Chika becomes a permanent part of their household, and their lives, as they embark on a two-year, around-the-world journey to find a cure. As Chika’s boundless optimism and humor teach Mitch the joys of caring for a child, he learns that a relationship built on love, no matter what blows it takes, can never be lost.

 

Told in hindsight, and through illuminating conversations with Chika herself, this is Albom at his most poignant and vulnerable. Finding Chika is a celebration of a girl, her adoptive guardians, and the incredible bond they formed - a devastatingly beautiful portrait of what it means to be a family, regardless of how it is made.

 

Transcendent Kingdom: A Novel

By Yaa Gyasi  (2020)

Gifty is a sixth-year PhD candidate in neuroscience at the Stanford University School of Medicine studying reward-seeking behavior in mice and the neural circuits of depression and addiction. Her brother, Nana, was a gifted high school athlete who died of a heroin overdose after an ankle injury left him hooked on OxyContin. Her suicidal mother is living in her bed. Gifty is determined to discover the scientific basis for the suffering she sees all around her. But even as she turns to the hard sciences to unlock the mystery of her family's loss, she finds herself hungering for her childhood faith and grappling with the evangelical church in which she was raised, whose promise of salvation remains as tantalizing as it is elusive.

 

Transcendent Kingdom is a deeply moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression and addiction and grief - a novel about faith, science, religion, love. Exquisitely written, emotionally searing, this is an exceptionally powerful follow-up to Gyasi's phenomenal debut, Homegoing.

 

(I listened to this moving book on Audible)

 

 

Black Man in a White Coat

A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine

by Damon Tweedy (from Goodreads)

 

One doctor's passionate and profound memoir of his experience grappling with race, bias, and the unique health problems of black Americans

 

When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school. Making matters worse, in lecture after lecture the common refrain for numerous diseases resounds, "More common in blacks than in whites."

 

Black Man in a White Coat examines the complex ways in which both black doctors and patients must navigate the difficult and often contradictory terrain of race and medicine. Through their stories, he illustrates the complex social, cultural, and economic factors at the root of many health problems in the black community. In this powerful, moving, and deeply empathic book, Tweedy explores the challenges confronting black doctors, and the disproportionate health burdens faced by black patients, ultimately seeking a way forward to better treatment and more compassionate care.