From a young age we are taught to seek guidance from those who are more knowledgeable than ourselves. Doctors, surgeons, and nurses have all been educated in their specific fields, but this doesn’t always make them experts. Over the past five years, Theresa Errante-Parrino has dealt with cancer. Here she records her breast cancer story, sharing behind-the-scenes details of her personal experiences. From dealing with difficult doctors to adjusting to a new lifestyle and new routines, the author gives insight into what having cancer is really like. Having learned from her own trials, Errante-Parrino hopes to encourage others to take control of their medical situations as their own advocate, speaking out when they believe something isn’t going to help them. With formal medical training as a certified medical assistant, pharmacy technician, paramedic, and X-ray technician, Theresa has the knowledge to recognize when medical conclusions are not truthful or correct. Educate yourself and raise your voice, because no one knows your body like you do.

Almost 20 billion times each year, a person walks into a doctor's office. The person becomes a patient. Everyone becomes this patient at some point. How will you talk to your physicians? What will you tell them? What will they tell you in return? They can't tell you what they don't know. They can tell you when they don't know. Will they? What Doctors Cannot Tell You explores the uncertainty that pervades medicine. It breaks the code of silence within which too many physician-patient conversations take place. The patients' stories in its pages will empower you to ask questions of your physicians, with a firm belief that healing and hope begin from honesty in those critical conversations. This book marries surgically precise medical narrative to thinking and perspective that will throw the curtains wide on what medicine knows, what it doesn't know, and how it tries to tell the difference between the two. This book is Outliers meets Patch Adams, only with an added how-to twist beyond the instructive and powerfully human narratives. At every chapter's end, the reader will find a list of principles, one for each vignette, and questions to ask his or her physician. A few books in the last decade have focused on human errors and complications in medicine. Each has suggested ways to improve medicine by the application of checklists and protocols. This book adds a unique and important angle to these considerations: How firmly do we know what should go on the checklist or protocol in the first place? How clear has medicine been with its patients about what it cannot know or does not yet know?

What Doctors Cannot Tell You explores the uncertainty that pervades medicine. It breaks the code of silence within which too many physician-patient conversations take place. The patients' stories in its pages will empower you to ask questions of your physicians, with a firm belief that healing and hope begin from honesty in those critical conversations. This book marries surgically precise medical narrative to thinking and perspective that will throw the curtains wide on what medicine knows, what it doesn't know, and how it tries to tell the difference between the two.

National Healthcare Reform? Now that's a complex subject. But here's an idea: Why don't we just start by weeding out the lunatics? The Florida doctor who conspired with his brothers to chop off a finger with an axe, so they could collect a nifty insurance pay-off . . . The New York physician who accidently blew himself up, demolishing an entire building, to spite his divorcing wife . . . The Arizona MD who - while facing 67-counts of sexually abusing his patients - announced in court, "Okay. So I'm not exactly Dr. Marcus Welby." The East Coast doctor who stole a cadaver's hand in order to impress a topless dancer . . . Oh, we're just getting started. There are 100,000 more you might want to keep an eye on. ________________________________ "Author McDonald breaks ranks and names names. I sincerely wish I could report that these are merely a few far-out nutcases. I honestly cannot say that. And this fact alone makes his work, regrettably, important." J. William Hollingsworth, MD (Retired) Former Chief of Medicine, San Diego VA Medical Center "Disturbing, provocative and uncomfortably funny." Lesley Miller, MD, (former "surgeon to the stars") USC Medical Center, L.A. __________________________________ Patrick McDonald is a graduate of UCSD School of Medicine, La Jolla, original EMS program. He was appointed the first EMS supervisor for the city of San Diego under Mayor (and then governor) Pete Wilson's administration; was a coauthor of the National Waterpark Lifeguard Training Manual; a set medic on such movies as Planet of the Apes; has provided medical services for entertainers such as Engelbert Humperdinck and the Commodores. For three decades this author and guest speaker has collected thousands of outlandish physician stories. He writes, "I waited 25 years for someone else to do this. The fact is, no profession in America spawns more outright lunacy. And we thought you might like to know a little more about it." _________________________________ For more on the fascinating subject of doctor shenanigans, come visit our website, where you will learn all about your own "Dumb Doctor" story, money-making opportunities. We are gathering nutty cases for the next book, due out in the Spring, 2010. Why not join the fun? www.medicalmaniacs.com

For many doctors, their role as powerful healer precludes thoughts of ever getting sick themselves. When they do, it initiates a profound shift of awareness-- not only in their sense of their selves, which is invariably bound up with the "invincible doctor" role, but in the way that they view their patients and the doctor-patient relationship. While some books have been written from first-person perspectives on doctors who get sick-- by Oliver Sacks among them-- and TV shows like "House" touch on the topic, never has there been a "systematic, integrated look" at what the experience is like for doctors who get sick, and what it can teach us about our current health care system and more broadly, the experience of becoming ill. The psychiatrist Robert Klitzman here weaves together gripping first-person accounts of the experience of doctors who fall ill and see the other side of the coin, as a patient. The accounts reveal how dramatic this transformation can be-- a spiritual journey for some, a radical change of identity for others, and for some a new way of looking at the risks and benefits of treatment options. For most however it forever changes the way they treat their own patients. These questions are important not just on a human interest level, but for what they teach us about medicine in America today. While medical technology advances, the health care system itself has become more complex and frustrating, and physician-patient trust is at an all-time low. The experiences offered here are unique resource that point the way to a more humane future.

Good Times in the Hospital is a collection of unlikely stories, poignant vignettes, and humorous anecdotes gathered from a lifetime of experience with real doctors and patients. As the setting moves from Duke University Medical School, to The Mayo Clinic, to an inner-city charity hospital, to a military hospital, to private hospitals in metropolitan centers and rural towns, this inside look at hospital life allows the reader to gradually gain a new perspective on medical men and women: They are not much different from the rest of us. After forty years of medical education and hospital practice, the author concludes that, “Doctors are no worse than other people.” As for the patients in these stories—although hospitals are engaged in the most serious business imaginable—you cannot find more laugh-out-loud behavior anywhere. This is because when people are seeking medical care, they are vulnerable and reveal their true, inner selves. And, it turns out that the true, inner selves of most people are often some combination of fascinating, inexplicable, and ridiculous. To paraphrase a quote by Mel Brooks: “So long as this old world keeps spinning around and around, every person riding on it will occasionally get dizzy and do something stupid.” Good Times in the Hospital reminds us that it is unhealthy to take life too seriously and a lighthearted temperament is just as important as a sound diet. This point of view makes it possible for one book to combine a rare glimpse inside the hospital, an informative look at health care, and an entertaining collection of anecdotes. There are chapters about juvenile practical jokes among medical students, mistakes by doctors in training, serious life lessons learned at the bedside, hospital affairs that end badly, doctors threatening other doctors with handguns, a girl who tries to stop her grandma’s pacemaker with an MR scanner, an identical twin who has the surgery intended for her sister, an old man patiently waiting his turn in a charity hospital emergency room while holding his intestines in his hand, boyhood memories of a doctor who accompanied his father making house calls, a doctor who missed his chance to win a Nobel Prize by not listening to his patient, an intriguing case of domestic abuse, fascinating hypochondriacs, insights into why intelligent people spend their last dollar on irrational treatments, amazing examples of cures by mind over matter, the importance of our attitude on our wellness, and even reflections on the question of medical miracles. Is it appropriate to laugh at the behavior of doctors attending their patients and entertain ourselves with yarns of patients in their sickbed? Good Times in the Hospital promotes the viewpoint that the best way to deal with our inevitable foibles is to laugh about them. The author says, “If you believe that some things are sacrosanct and immune from humor, you are reading the wrong book.” In an epilogue following this rich tapestry of medical tales, the author offers some final thoughts on how to sort through medical advice, a discussion of alternative medicine, the real effect of malpractice lawsuits on doctors, and the responsibility of patients for their own health. This epilogue is a rare opportunity to hear from an experienced, retired physician on such matters. Such frank opinions are virtually never discussed by doctors in practice, who must be circumspect in what they say for fear of alienating their patients, losing their insurance coverage, or becoming the target of a law firm. Mostly though, Good Times in the Hospital is an insightful panoply of true-life stories that illustrate the best and worst of human nature, a chance for the reader to have some fun and learn a little along the way.