Medical Illnesses

Finding a cancerous lump in her breast seven weeks after a clean mammogram was terrifying. But fitness expert and race announcer Fitz Koehler refused to play the victim or allow cancer to steal her extraordinary career or time with family. In My Noisy Cancer Comeback, Fitz reveals the juicy and gory details of her 16-month battle, all while zigzagging across the United States.

In Sweden, refugee children fall asleep for months and years at a time. In Upstate New York, high school students develop contagious seizures. In the US embassy in Cuba, employees complain of headaches and memory loss after hearing strange noises in the night. These disparate cases are some of the most remarkable diagnostic mysteries of the 21st century, as both doctors and scientists have struggled to explain them within the boundaries of medical science and—more crucially—to treat them.

The Smooth River is the remarkable story of how a well-known public relations expert and her husband met her stage 4 pancreatic cancer head-on. With vigor and strength, they deployed all they and medicine had to offer. But in contrast to narrow conventional approaches, the couple developed a far more expansive view of what strength means in response to a crisis for which there are no medical cures. They called this the Smooth River.

Leaving London to return home to rural South Wales, Robyn finds that it's her old life - same teddy bears resting on her pillow, their bodies tucked under the duvet; same view of the garages behind which she'd had her first cigarette and first kiss - but so much has changed. Her dad, the proud, charmingly intelligent self-made man who made people laugh, was in the grip of early onset Alzheimer's. His brilliant mind, which saw him building power stations and literally bringing light into the lives of others, had succumbed to darkness.

The Long Tale of Tears and Smiles explores an immigrant oncologist’s journey of triumphs and struggles, from growing up in Syria, to the tragic death of her brother, to her experiences as a young immigrant medical student and trainee in the USA. Walk through her anguish witnessing the civil war in Syria and its devastation; see her become a practitioner, watching the field of oncology evolves throughout the years.

This is the story of how Olivia turned the physical challenges and emotional hardships she had faced since she was a little girl into an engaged life of advocacy for others. So many young people are faced with life-changing hardships—from illness and disease to loss and calamity. What Olivia Goodreau discovers through her journey with chronic Lyme, and what she has been sharing with the world, is that inside of every predicament is also a possibility.

Renowned as a BBC journalist, Victoria Derbyshire has spent 20 years finding the human story behind the headlines. In 2015 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. With honesty and openness, she decided to live out her treatment and recovery in the spotlight in a series of video diaries. Victoria has kept a diary since she was nine years old, and in Dear Cancer, Love Victoria she shares her day-to-day experiences of life following diagnosis and coming to terms with a future that wasn't planned.

In this book, Stephen G. Post offers new perspectives on the worth and dignity of people with Alzheimer's and related disorders despite the negative influence of "hypercognitive" values that place an ethically unacceptable emphasis on human dignity as based on linear rationality and strength of memory. With vignettes and narratives, he argues for a deeper dignity grounded in consciousness, emotional presence, creativity, interdependence, music, and a self that is not "gone" but "differently abled."

Diagnosed with a late-stage cancer after years of bungled and inadequate medical attention...and then to discover the best-practice chemotherapy is not available in your province. A true story, The Cancer Olympics is a suspenseful and poignant treatment of an unthinkable situation, an account of advocacy and survival that explores our deepest values regarding democracy, medicine, and friendship.

A story about a doctor helping people suffering from mysterious conditions overcome hopeless situations Dr. Zachary Tannous has a history of working with high-level athletes of all kinds, specializing in enhancing physical performance, treating sports traumas, with a focus in neurology, autoimmune disease, and conditions of severe chronic pain. As an ex-collegiate football and semi-professional rugby player, Dr. Tannous knows about traumatic injury and physical performance from a first-hand perspective.

Living in the Belgian Congo with her husband in the 1960s, Fran’s mother became pregnant with a daughter. However, right after she gave birth in the hospital, she felt strange. Unbeknownst to anyone, another daughter was on the way, but before anybody responded, an hour had passed. Because of the delay, Fran was born with cerebral palsy. Growing up with her siblings in Africa, Fran always felt different. When everyone else was playing and having fun, she would watch and wish she could join in.

In The Cancer Code, Dr Jason Fung offers a revolutionary new understanding of this invasive, often fatal disease – what it is, how it manifests and why it is so challenging to treat. In this rousing narrative, Dr Fung identifies the medical community’s many missteps in cancer research – in particular, its focus on genetics, or what he terms the ‘seed’ of cancer, at the expense of examining the ‘soil,’ or the conditions under which cancer flourishes.

What's one of the leading causes of premature death in the Western world? Loneliness. And whom does loneliness kill? Who does it not? For every citizen in every one of the world's technologically advanced nations--from homemakers to businesspeople, from college students to school dropouts, from the elderly to the young--loneliness is an unrecognized, unguarded-against stalker.

A Medical Memoir Embark on a deeply moving journey with Finding Venice, a powerful exploration of grief, resilience, and faith in the aftermath of a transformative medical event. Written with honesty and candor, this poignant narrative offers a glimpse into the profound impact of a stroke on a young woman and her family, inviting readers to witness the challenges and triumphs of caregiving, fortitude, and hope. Engaging, uplifting, and inspiring, Finding Venice is a must-read for anyone seeking solace and courage to navigate daunting challenges and embark on unexpected journeys. Scott ...

The End of Miracles is a twisting, haunting story about the drastic consequences of a frustrated obsession. A woman with a complex past wants nothing more than to become a mother, but struggles with infertility and miscarriage. She is temporarily comforted by a wish-fulfilling false pregnancy, but when reality inevitably dashes that fantasy, she falls into a depression so deep she must be hospitalized.

When a lymphoma scare threatened the life of a journalist, she began a quest to find the correct medical diagnosis for the mysterious illness she'd battled for nearly 20 years. She turned to her favorite TV show, House M.D., for inspiration. She used her research skills to look for a "real life" Gregory House to give her some answers. In this brutally honest memoir, Nika Beamon reveals how she found the doctor who saved her and how you might be able to also.

Our hips are critical to our ability to move effectively, so it makes sense to do what we can to keep them functioning well. I wrote this audiobook to give you options you may not even be aware of to keep your hips healthy and heal injuries before they become chronic.

This taut yet lyrical memoir tells of the author’s experience with a baffling illness poised to take her sight, and gives a deeply felt meditation on vulnerability and on what it means to lose the faith you had and find something better. One day at the end of 2009, during a routine eye exam that Nora Gallagher nearly skipped, her doctor said, “Darn.” Her right optic nerve was inflamed, the cause unknown, a condition that if left untreated would cause her to lose her sight.

Allie Cashel has suffered from chronic Lyme disease for 16 years - but much of the medical community refuses to recognize her symptoms as the result of infectious disease. In Suffering the Silence: Chronic Lyme Disease in an Age of Denial, Cashel paints a living portrait of what is often called post-treatment Lyme syndrome, featuring the stories of chronic Lyme patients from around the world and their struggle for recognition and treatment.

Mysterious and misunderstood, distorted by biblical imagery of disfigurement and uncleanness, Hansen's disease or leprosy has all but disappeared from America's consciousness. In Carville, Louisiana, the closed doors of the nation's last center for the treatment of leprosy open to reveal stories of sadness, separation, and even strength in the face of what was once a life-wrenching diagnosis. Drawn from interviews with living patients and extensive research in the leprosarium's archives, Carville: Remembering Leprosy in America tells the stories of former patients.