Monday, May 24, 2010

Critical Care

After I read this book I felt like Oliver Twist - I wanted "more." More information about Teresa Brown's cancer patients, more about her decision to change careers from teaching college English to become an oncology R.N. and more about the emotional and physical impact of daily life on a cancer unit's nursing team.

Brown's stories span the comical to the heart wrenching with a bit of hospital politics thrown in as well as  her own experiences as a patient negotiating the emergency department when she hurt her knee. Her writing is crisp,  readable and was a great pick by "Reader's Digest Magazine," for the June 2010 book excerpt.

If you like medical memoirs, life and death snippets and nurse stories than this is the perfect book for you. If you like details, in depth knowledge about patients, their diseases their feelings, emotions and family situations then this is not your book. If you want to know more about the author's career change, well you won't get many details about that either.

Still, you cannot beat the writing and it will leave you wanting more.