Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table

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Occupational therapists help find ways to adjust tasks and conditions to match a person’s needs and abilities.

Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life [PDF] [EPUB] Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life

This is an incredible compilation. I'm not sure why, but with medicine, despite the fact that you lose more patients than you can save, it's those few survivors that give you the ability to persevere. They make it all matter. It doesn't matter how smart you are, you just need to be smart enough to care more than others, to be more passionate than others. It's tragic that a healthcare system is in the hands of political leaders who usually don't know enough about the preciousness of human life. Its not just the NHS, its a lot of countries' healthcare systems. Its tragic because lives are lost when support was needed. Chroniclers such as Westaby and Wharton are much needed to remind us of the ethical dilemmas that have yet to be resolved, the value of vocation and why, for all its flaws, the NHS is a public service that must not be allowed to die.Treating patients with heart failure and other defects to this vital organ is like walking a tightrope between life and death; it is so easy to tilt and fall over to either side. In fact, in cardiac surgery, the heart is momentarily stopped, dependent entirely on external machinery to maintain blood circulation. A single misstep can cause irrevocable damage. When Kawita became pregnant with their second child, Uttam worried they wouldn’t be able to afford the birth but then they heard about Penny Appeal’s new Health Centre. Kawita gave birth at our centre to a healthy baby, and both mother and child are dong wonderfully. In general, there are three options for the classroom placement of a child with Fragile X, based on that child’s specific abilities and needs: Not everyone with the mutated FMR1 gene has symptoms of Fragile X syndrome, because the body may still be able to make FMRP. A few things affect how much FMRP the body can make: When a surgeon remains focused on helping as many patients as his ability will allow, some will die. But we should no longer accept substandard facilities, teams or equipment. Otherwise patients will die needlessly.”

Fragile Lives by Stephen Westaby | Book Review Fragile Lives by Stephen Westaby | Book Review

A powerful, important and incredibly moving book, Fragile Lives offers an exceptional insight into the exhilarating and sometimes tragic world of heart surgery, and how it feels to hold someone’s life in your hands. From being a working class boy from Scunthorpe to operating on some of the most high profile cases of heart surgery the world has seen, I felt like I was along with Stephen for the journey - and what a journey! Highly recommended. Speech-language therapists can help people with Fragile X syndrome improve their pronunciation of words and sentences, slow down their speech, and use language more effectively. Healthcare providers often use a blood sample to diagnose Fragile X. The healthcare provider will take a sample of blood and will send it to a laboratory, which will determine what form of the FMR1 gene is present. 1 Prenatal Testing (During Pregnancy) Masterfully written and when Open Heart is recited, it rolls off the tongue like prose in its melliferous rhythm narrated by one of the world's leading heart surgeons. If you happen to favor Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal or legendary Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm you have found a read on the same level with added gore and "blut” pooling.Those who believe that the drama of medical TV shows is overplayed should read this book. It is a fascinating account of a career that observed and facilitated huge medical innovation. The effect this had on the patients whose cases are included had me in tears of sorrow and joy on more than one occasion. To anyone with an opinion on the value of national healthcare expenditure, this is a recommended read.

Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of 9780008196769: Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of

The crimson fountain hit the operating lights, sprayed the surgeons, soaked the green drapes. Someone murmured “Oh sh..! I was good with my hands (an understatement). The battle was lost…Yet I knew about life and death.” Physical. Most infants and younger children with Fragile X don’t have any specific physical features of this syndrome. When these children start to go through puberty, however, many will begin to develop certain features that are typical of those with Fragile X. ALCAPA手术技术有局限，失败率也很高，于是我趁飞行的时间思考别的手术方案。等到飞机巡航到爪哇上空时，我已经设计好了新的方案。我是最后一个上飞机的，到伦敦时又成了第一个下来的。就在我等待飞机连接空桥、打开舱门的时候，客舱服务总监给我递上一瓶香槟，祝我好运。她轻声说：“我姐姐的孩子就是您动的手术。”世界真小。我谢了她。 Spanning many years and many innovations, "Fragile Hearts" puts life into huge perspective - just how much we rely on the heart to function well was something I had little understanding of, now I am literally going to be thankful for every beat. Doctors are the unsung heroes sometimes, this is the second medical memoir I've read (the brilliant "Do No Harm" from Henry Marsh being the other, which does for the brain what Dr Westaby does for the heart here and I can also highly recommend) and it is a fascinating world that we both see and don't see.We will follow the author from the main reason he got interested in cardiac surgery, till quite recent in time thoughout a series of surgeries. He will walk us through a series of cases, and patients, that will follow his career and development as surgeon from the most simple to the really challenging ones that will leave you bitting your nails hoping for the best. I started it Monday morning, and by Monday night I was a ball of emotions upon finishing it. Every chapter is a case story, and every case is heartbreaking yet life-affirming, if that makes sense. I found myself close to tears on more than one occasion on Monday, knowing that these are real people and they were meeting Westaby at possibly the worst moment of their lives. Fragile X syndrome is the most common form of inherited intellectual and developmental disability (IDD).

Stephen Westaby on Why He Wrote Fragile Live - Waterstones

An incredible memoir from one of the world’s most eminent heart surgeons and some of the most remarkable and poignant cases he’s worked on. As a child Westaby watched two of his grandparents die slow painful deaths; his grandfather from heart failure and his grandmother from a cancer which left her to suffocate. This experience has clearly directed his career and his desires to help those who would otherwise be written off. He says you need to be objective as a surgeon, but he never comes across as uncaring. This review makes the book sound moanier than it is. It just triggered my personal anger over the slow demoralisation of the NHS. In fact it's really quite uplifting in what we can achieve will the right will. The sacrifices made by medical staff are always appreciated.Westaby worked all over the world and experienced many levels of both staff competence and facility provision. When dealing with a patient who will surely die without intervention, risks seem a price worth paying. This is the way, the only way, that new techniques and treatments can be developed. A full-frontal and thrilling portrayal. Each story in this fascinating book brings a new nail-biting surgical adventure... A gifted surgeon, Westaby is also a natural writer... Fragile Lives succeeds on many levels: political battle cry, chronicle of bloody feats, history of modern cardiology, tribute to patients and paean to surgery.’– Daily Telegraph As a doctor I truly enjoyed this book and how the patients’ stories were told in a respectful way without loosing that morbid matter-of-fact humor many doctors develop. As a rugby-playing, testosterone-fuelled medical student, aged 18, he illicitly watched from the eaves of the Ether Dome, in the then Charing Cross hospital, as a 26-year-old woman called Beth was operated on for a heart weakened by rheumatic fever. She died. A year later, Christiaan Barnard performed the first human-to-human heart transplant. The patient lived for 18 days. Fragile X results from a change or mutation in the Fragile X Messenger Ribonucleoprotein 1 ( FMR1) gene, which is found on the X chromosome. The gene normally makes a protein, called FMRP, that is important for creating and maintaining connections between cells in the brain and nervous system. The mutation causes the body to make only a little bit or none of the protein, which often causes the symptoms of Fragile X.