Theresa Brown’s new memoir
Healing: When a Nurse Becomes a Patient
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When an oncology nurse is diagnosed with cancer, she has to confront the most critical, terrified, and angry patient she’s ever encountered: herself.
New York Times bestselling author Theresa Brown tells a poignant, powerful, and intensely personal story about breast cancer in Healing. She brings us along with her from the mammogram that would change her life through her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. Despite her training and years of experience as an oncology and hospice nurse, she finds herself continually surprised by the lack of compassion in the medical maze—just as so many of us have. Why is she expected to wait over a long weekend to hear the results of her cancer tests if they are ready? Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Where is the empathy from caregivers? At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that anyone labeled a “difficult” patient risks getting worse care.
As she did in her book The Shift, Brown draws us into her work with the unforgettable details of her daily life—the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the frustrated patients—but from her new perch as a patient, she also takes a look back with rare candor at some of her own cases as a nurse and considers what she didn’t know then and what she could have done better. A must-read for all of us who have tried to find healing through our health-care system.
“Healing is a stunning book that helped me understand how to survive a serious illness and how to understand hospitals in general. Theresa Brown, RN, is also a hell of a good writer.” — James Patterson
“Deeply moving.” — Damon Tweedy, New York Times bestselling author of Black Man in a White Coat
“A smart, moving, clear-eyed, yet ultimately hopeful jewel of a read on health and care from one of the most thoughtful healthcare writers I know.” — Pauline W. Chen, MD, bestselling author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality