HONORS ANATOMY
Suggested Reading
Chapters 1-3
A Not Entirely Benign Procedure: Four Years As A Medical Student by PerriKlass
Chronicles the author's experiences as a student at Harvard Medical School, from the jitters of her first duty in a hospital to the pride of graduation day.
Tissues
The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
"In 2010, about six hundred thousand Americans, and more than 7 million humans around the world, will die of cancer." With this sobering statistic, physician and researcher Siddhartha Mukherjee begins his comprehensive and eloquent "biography" of one of the most virulent diseases of our time. An exhaustive account of cancer's origins, The Emperor of All Maladies illustrates how modern treatments--multi-pronged chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery, as well as preventative care--came into existence thanks to a century's worth of research, trials, and small, essential breakthroughs around the globe. While The Emperor of All Maladies is rich with the science and history behind the fight against cancer, it is also a meditation on illness, medical ethics, and the complex, intertwining lives of doctors and patients.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks byRebecca Skloot,
Her name was Henrietta Lacks, but scientists know her as HeLa. She was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who worked the same land as her slave ancestors, yet her cells-taken without her knowledge-became one of the most important tools in medicine. The first "immortal" human cells grown in culture, they are still alive today, though she has been dead for more than sixty years.
Integumentary System
The Burn Journalsby Brent Runyon
In 1991, fourteen-year-old Brent Runyon came home from school, doused his bathrobe in gasoline, put it on, and lit a match. He suffered third-degree burns over 85% of his body and spent the next year recovering in hospitals and rehab facilities. During that year of physical recovery, Runyon began to question what he’d done, undertaking the complicated journey from near-death back to high school, and from suicide back to the emotional mainstream of life.
Skeletal System
Big Girl Small: A Novel by Rachel DeWoskin
Judy Lohden is your above-average sixteen-year-old—sarcastic and vulnerable, talented and uncertain, full of big dreams for a big future. With a singing voice that can shake an auditorium, she should be the star of Darcy Academy, the local performing arts high school. So why is a girl this promising hiding out in a seedy motel room on the edge of town? The fact that the national media is on her trail after a controversy that might bring down the whole school could have something to do with it. And that scandal has something—but not everything—to do with the fact that Judy,with Achondroplasia, is three feet nine inches tall.
Handle with Care: A Novel by Jodi Picoult
Charlotte and Sean O'Keefe's daughter, Willow, was born with brittle bone disease, a condition that requires Charlotte to act as full-time caregiver and has strained their emotional and financial limits. Willow's teenaged half-sister, Amelia, suffers as well, overshadowed by Willow's needs and lost in her own adolescent turmoil. When Charlotte decides to sue for wrongful birth in order to obtain a settlement to ensure Willow's future, the already strained family begins to implode. Not only is the defendant Charlotte's longtime friend, but the case requires Charlotte and Sean to claim that had they known of Willow's condition, they would have terminated the pregnancy, a statement that strikes at the core of their faith and family.
Skeletal Muscle
Nemesis by Philip Roth
Bucky Cantor is a vigorous, dutiful twenty-three-year-old playground director during the summer of 1944. A javelin thrower and weightlifter, he is disappointed with himself because his weak eyes have excluded him from serving in the war alongside his contemporaries. As the devastating disease begins to ravage Bucky’s playground,
Roth leads us through every inch of emotion such a pestilence can breed: fear, panic, anger, bewilderment, suffering, and pain. Moving between the streets of Newark and a pristine summer camp high in the Poconos, Nemesis tenderly and startlingly depicts Cantor’s passage into personal disaster, the condition of childhood, and the painful effect that the wartime polio epidemic has on a closely-knit, family-oriented Newark community and its children.
The Book of KehlsChristine Kehl O'Hagan
When Bridget Moore left Ireland in 1865, she never suspected that along with her trunk and rosary beads, she was bringing Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy to New York City. It wasn't until Bridget was a grandmother, one who had buried four of her grandsons, that she realized she'd brought MD to the States, a disease that would haunt her family for generations. Years later, her great-grandchildren grew up under the elevated trains of Jackson Heights, Queens--and one of them was Christine Kehl O'Hagan, the author of this moving and insightful memoir.Christine, her sister Pam, and their brother Richie played in the streets and attended mass every Sunday. But Richie had trouble walking. By the time he was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, Christine learned that two of her mother's brothers--uncles she'd never known about--had died of MD. Christine eventually married and had a healthy son. But one day she saw her second boy, Jamie,struggle to climb onto the school bus--and she knew then and there that this disease would be with her the rest of her life.Extraordinarily written, with much honesty and humor, The Book of Kehls is the engaging story of a family that has known love, courage, and heartbreak in equal measure--and survived.
Nervous System and Brain
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Alice Howland, happily married with three grown children and a house on the Cape,
is a celebrated Harvard professor at the height of her career when she notices a forgetfulness creeping into her life. As confusion starts to cloud her thinking and her memory begins to fail her, she receives a devastating diagnosis: early onset Alzheimer's disease. Fiercely independent, Alice struggles to maintain her lifestyle and live in the moment, even as her sense of self is being stripped away.
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
This is a story of a suburban Boston woman who precariously balances a high-powered career, marriage, and three small children in a frenetic dance that's more mosh pit than Kabuki. Sarah describes her world in dizzying terms, in a language familiar to working moms everywhere.
Then the unthinkable happens: While driving, she attempts to make a phone call and ends up in a horrific crash. Sarah somehow manages to come out alive, but is left with a right-hemisphere brain injury — Left Neglect. This little-known but truly serious disorder affects the left-side view of the patient. In other words, Sarah is unable to see anything on the left. Her vision is intact, but the "left" no longer exists for her — her left leg, her left hand, anyone and anything on her left periphery.
Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom
Newspaper columnist Mitch Albom recounts time spent with his 78-year-old sociology professor, Morrie Schwartz, at Brandeis University, who was dying from Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS).
Senses
Stitches: A Memoir by David Small
David Small, a best-selling and highly regarded children's book illustrator,
comes forward with this unflinching graphic memoir. Remarkable and intensely dramatic, Stitches tells the story of a fourteen-year-old boy who awakes one day from a supposedly harmless operation to discover that he has been transformed
into a virtual mute—a vocal cord removed, his throat slashed and stitched together
like a bloody boot. From horror to hope, Small proceeds to graphically portray an almost unbelievable descent into adolescent hell and the difficult road to physical, emotional, and artistic recovery.
The Story of My Life: The Restored Edition (Modern Library Classics) by Helen Keller
The Story of My Life, a remarkable account of overcoming the debilitating challenges of being both deaf and blind, has become an international classic, making Helen Keller one of the most well-known, inspirational figures in history. Originally published in 1903,
Keller’s fascinating memoir narrates the events of her life up to her third year at Radcliffe College.
Endocrine System
Needles: A Memoir Of Growing Up With Diabetes by Andie Dominick
All her life, Andie Dominick adored her older sister, Denise. She wanted to look like her, talk like her, be her. Unfortunately, she got part of her wish when, at age nine, she was diagnosed with the same disease from which Denise had suffered since age two: juvenile diabetes. In this beautifully written, revelatory, and profoundly affecting memoir, Dominick recounts her transformation from a free-spirited kid who enjoyed giving shots to her stuffed animals with her sister's castaway needles to a life-long patient who must learn to inject herself twice a day. Emotionally charged, tragic,
but in the end hopeful, Dominick tells how she found the courage to embrace love and hope in the face of fear, and to live with a disease that has taken so much from her.
Blood
Saving Henry : A Mother's Journeyby LaurieStrongin
Laurie Strongin describes the lengths she and her husband went to find a cure for their son when he developed Fanconi anemia--an almost always fatal illness--and their willingness to try a procedure that involved preimplantation genetic diagnosis--PGD--and the political setbacks they faced.
The Book of Blood: From Legends and Leeches to Vampires and Veins by
HP Newquist (to be released 8/12 and for middle level)
HP Newquist's thrilling volume explores the dark and often gruesome tales about blood. Though common among living beings, this substance is anything but ordinary. People have always feared and respected blood. It spills out at both birth and death-its bright red color like a warning sign-indicating events of the utmost significance. Ancient civilizations couldn't perform religious rituals without the revered liquid. Doctors up through the nineteenth century attempted to cure mysterious illnesses by draining their patients' blood. Scientists only recently began to understand this fascinating fluid: how its microscopic components nourish the entire body, why simple transfusions don't always work, and that bloodletting likely killed people who otherwise would have lived. But back before people understood what blood really was, they had to weave their own explanations. Whether vampire legends, medieval medical practices, and Mayan sacrificial rites fascinate or terrify, this comprehensive (and sometimes horrific) investigation into blood's past and present will surely enthrall. And if this account is a little blood-curdling, well, that's half the fun!
Cardiovascular System
Heart Matters : A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon by Kathy E. Magliato.
Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of the few female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group-those surgeons specially trained to perform heart transplants. Heart Matters is the story of the making of a surgeon who is also a wife and mother. In this powerful and moving memoir, Dr. Magliato takes us into her highly demanding, physically intense, male-dominated world and shows us how she masterfully works to save patients and lives every day.
Second Hand Heart by Catherine Ryan Hyde
Vida is 19 and has never had much of a life. Struggling along with a life-threatening heart condition, her whole life has been one long preparation for death. But suddenly she is presented with a donor heart, and just in time. Now she gets to do something she never imagined she'd have to do: live.
Digestive System
Stick Figure: A Diary of My Former Self by Lori Gottlieb
Gottlieb, nearing thirty years old, discovered her childhood diaries in a closet in her parents' home as she searched for some chemistry notes to aid in her quest to attend medical school. This book is "based on diaries" she wrote when she was diagnosed with and underwent treatment for anorexia nervosa. It is the writing of a precocious, strong-willed preteen who enjoys chess, being unique, writing, and getting straight A's in school, yet who is lonely and desperate to fit in and be popular.
Respiratory System
Breathing For a Living: A Memoir byLaura Rothenberg
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Twenty-one-year-old Laura Rothenberg had always tried to live a normal life -- even with lungs that betrayed her and a constant awareness that she might not live to see her next birthday. Like most people born with cystic fibrosis, the chronic disease that affects primarily the lungs, Laura struggled to come to grips with a life that had already been compromised in many ways. Sometimes healthy and able to attend school, other times hospitalized for weeks, Laura found solace in keeping a diary. In her writing, she could be open, honest, and irreverent, like the young person she was. Yet behind this voice is a penetrating maturity about her mortality, revealing a will and temperament that is fierce and insightful.
Sixtyfive Roses: A Sister's Memoir by Heather Summerhayes Cariou
The author recounts her entire family's struggle with her younger sister Pam's diagnosis of Cystic Fibrosis at the age of four and the joys and heartbreaks of the twenty-two pursuant years until Pam's death, as well as the efforts of the family and their community of Brantford, Ontario, to further the fight against the disease.
Urinary System
Moonface : A True Romance by AngelaBalcita
Angela Balcita recounts her struggles with kidney disease, describes how she felt when her boyfriend Charlie offered to donate his kidney, and discusses how his choice impacted their relationship.
R. Devlin