"We've all been there, sitting uncomfortably in a paper gown as a doctor impassively describes our prognosis. Sometimes it's simple and treatable. Other times we get news we can't fathom and then are faced with decisions that are literally life and death. In this revolutionary book, physician, behavioral scientist, and bioethicist Peter Ubel, M.D., reveals how hidden dynamics in the doctor/patient relationship keep us and our loved ones from making...

The story of Dr. Faraday, the son of a housemaid, who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country doctor. During the long hot summer of 1948, he is called to a patient at Hundreds Hall, where his mother once worked. But it is now in decline and its inhabitants, a mother, son, and daughter, are haunted by something more ominous than a dying way of life. When he takes on his new patient, Faraday has no idea how closely the family's story is...

The trials of a woman with cancer. The doctors she sees attribute her fatigue and headaches to everything but cancer until, finally, one of them discovers a tumor. Which is how she falls into the clutches of Dr. Mark Jacobs whose treatment is accompanied by bullying and proposals of marriage. Now in addition to cancer, she has him giving her headaches.

"The essential tools for making our own best medical decisions, cutting through the confusion caused by the health-care system, the media, and gaps in our own reasoning. Making the right medical choices is harder than ever. Whether we're deciding to take a cholesterol drug or choosing a cancer treatment, we are overwhelmed by information from all sides: our doctors' recommendations, dissenting expert opinions, confusing statistics, conflicting...

"Most people have visited a doctor's office or emergency room in their lifetime to gain clarity about an ailment or check in after a procedure. While doctors strive to ensure their patients understand their diagnoses, rarely do those outside the medical community understand the words and phrases we hear practitioners yell across a hospital hallway or murmur to a colleague behind office doors. Doctors and nurses use a kind of secret language, comprised...

"An exploration of how caring for ER patients is more than blood and mayhem. It is the practice of being attentive to patients complicated and often broken stories as well as their broken bodies"--

Three out of four people addicted to heroin probably started on a prescription opioid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In the United States alone, 16,000 people die each year as a result of prescription opioid overdose. But perhaps the most frightening aspect of the prescription drug epidemic is that it's built on well-meaning doctors treating patients with real problems. Combining case studies from her own practice with...

"Sidelined: How Women Manage & Mismanage Their Health discloses how women have been marginalized and hesitate to take control over their own healthcare. But what's behind this nationwide medical crisis? Too often, women downplay or ignore their symptoms to avoid being "difficult," often blaming themselves for serious illness. The end result could be inferior care, which can lead to serious consequences. Writer and researcher Susan Salenger explains...

"By shedding light on how doctors cope with the stresses and responsibilities of patients, colleagues, lawyers, and their personal lives, she explains why it is important that patients know how emotions influence the way physicians treat their patients both medically and interpersonally. Exploring the full range of human emotion--from the fear of making a fatal mistake to the pride and elation of triumphing over death, What Doctors Feel allows patients...

"'Wendy Doe' was found on a bus to Philadelphia with no money, no ID, and no memory of who she is, where she was going, or what she might have done. She is diagnosed with dissociative fugue, a temporary amnesia that could lift at any moment-- or never at all. Dr. Benjamin Strauss invites her to submit herself for experimental observation at his Meadowlark Institute for Memory Research. To Strauss's ambitious student, Lizzie Epstein, Wendy is an object...