Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient

From the mammogram that would change her life through her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, New York Times bestselling author Theresa Brown tells a poignant and powerful story about having breast cancer in the United States. Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, Brown finds it difficult to navigate the medical maze from the other side of the bed, especially because she knows that speaking up and being labeled a “difficult” patient could mean she’ll get worse care. Like the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, Brown has a treatable form of the disease, but in Healing she shows that, though our for-profit health care industry may “cure” us, it can leave many of us feeling alienated and uncared for. “People failed me when I was a patient and I failed patients when working as a nurse. I see that now,” she writes. As she did so brilliantly in her New York Times bestseller, The Shift, Brown relays the unforgettable details of her daily life as a nurse, this time looking back at some of her own cases and considering what she didn’t know then about the warping effects of fear and the healing virtues of compassion. Healing is a must-read for anyone who has ever interacted (or ever will interact) with medicine, which is all of us.