Theresa Brown (1)

I had an extra interest in reading Critical Care, as I underwent cancer treatment in 2008 and thus spent a great deal of time in the oncology ward of the local hospital. I found Theresa Brown's story to be a compelling one, both from the sense of her choosing nursing as a second career and her experiences working with cancer patients. As you might expect from a former university English professor, Brown has a gift for language that made this book very readable despite the difficult subject show more matter.

I've read a few "cancer memoirs" over the past few years, and found the vast majority of them lacking. This was the only book that dealt with the experience of having cancer that I felt I could really relate to, even when Brown was writing about other types of cancer than the one I had. Her thoughtfulness and compassion for her patients also reflects the vast majority of nurses I was lucky enough to have care for me while I was sick.

I've since read several of Brown's op-ed columns in the New York Times, and it's always like getting back in touch with an old friend. I'm glad she's still writing about her experiences with patients and the struggle to find a dignified end to life. show less

Every day is a sick day

The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives by Theresa Brown (Algonquin Books, $24.95).

Rather than recycle her columns as so many do, nurse and New York Times writer Theresa Brown gives us an hour-by-hour account of her day on the cancer ward of an urban hospital.

In The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, Brown’s got four patients—who she unfailing sees as people who happen to be sick rather than as diagnoses that happen to be show more people—several colleagues, and plenty of doctors to navigate, and her honesty and insight make for fascinating reading.

While some of what she covers will be familiar to inveterate watchers of medical TV shows, the drama is infinitely more personal. As she goes through the day, what Brown brings to it is the human and the humane: a stomach ache that turns into emergency surgery, or another patient’s quirky fussiness, which masks her fear at being out of control.

The Shift is a memoir that takes us to work, and it also ought to make us think about why we ask so much from health care professionals–and offer so little in return. It also makes an argument–albeit indirectly–for more use of health care “navigators” to keep people on track and comforted during the process of catastrophic illness.

(Reviewed on Lit/Rant: www.litrant.tumblr.com) show less

Critical Care is a quick and engaging read, providing a glimpse into the everyday activities of a nurse in a busy hospital. Brown’s description and sketches of the people she meets held my interest, and she drops the occasional pearl of a sentence. Her observations on the interaction of her job and her life as a parent and spouse are insightful but never pretentious. She never tries to do too much, focusing on interesting observations on nursing and how it changes her life. The approach show more serves her well.

A chapter on a personal injury is mimetic: that is, just as Brown’s injury interrupted her own life, her orientation to the unit and her work as a nurse, so the chapter interrupts the reader’s introduction to Brown’s narrative, learning of Brown’s observations of nursing. Brown uses the interruption to good effect (both in life and in the narrative). It is an effective break in the narrative and provides an insight useful to her care for patients later.

It must have been difficult raising three kids while at nursing school and then tackling her first clinical job ... and finding time to write about it. But Brown's account is well-paced and thoroughly interesting, and though I imagine she made a few enemies based on her observations of what happens on the floor, Brown makes clear that while physicians and other clinicians make timely and specific interventions for patients, patient care is for the most part undertaken by nurses. Her memoir is helpful in making that point clear to those of us unfamiliar with the everyday operations of a hospital.

One gripe: the title. It’s evident from the text that Brown understands the difference between a medical-surgical unit (such as medical oncology, the floor on which she works) and a critical care unit (such as the surgical ICU to which she transfers one of her patients). Her editor should understand that distinction. Yes, “critical care” is catchy and seems to capture the serious nature of an oncology patient’s illness. But medical oncology simply isn’t critical care. Why not call the book “ER” and tap into the public consciousness of that line of clinical care? (Ignoring for the moment that “ER” is itself inaccurate, the name of a patient bay within an Emergency Department or ED.) Peculiar that a book that otherwise addresses misconceptions in healthcare should perpetuate this one, and in its title. show less

Theresa Brown, an RN who worked in oncology and hospice, is at a followup scan to her mammogram when a mass is found in her breast. She takes us through her journey as nurse and patient in her moving memoir Healing-When A Nurse Becomes A Patient.

Brown describes in intimate detail being told by the radiologist that she sees "an ugly mass". She writes of calling her college aged twin daughters to pick her up and telling her family what is happening, and it puts every woman in her place. We all show more have that fear in the pit of our stomach when we go for that mammogram.

Brown also shares her story working as a nurse, what she learned there, and the nurses (good and bad) with whom she worked. As the mother of baby twins and a toddler, Brown felt she knew that speed was most important in her work as a nurse. Her preceptor taught her that it was more important to take time with the patient to truly discover what was going on.

Brown's journey as a cancer patient through the medical system in this country was eye-opening for her. As a nurse who worked in a hospital setting one would think she would know how to get the best care, but she had to transverse many mazes to get the treatment she needed.

Like everyone else, she turned to Google for answers to her questions, but that led to what she called "rabbit holes". She learned to trust the "safe sites- American Cancer Society, the National Cancer Institute and the CDC". She found that some breast cancer blogs and websites sponsored by pharmaceutical companies were untrustworthy.

She shared her experiences choosing a surgeon, having to wait too long for results, and arriving at the outpatient surgical center only to be told brusquely that "she wasn't on the list". After her surgery, she had to undergo four weeks of radiation threatments, and she takes us along with her.

Theresa Brown has a PhD in English, and her writing is crisp, detailed and informative. She doesn't waste a word in this important and personal memoir. One of Brown's biggest takeaways from this experience is that for-profit health care doesn't work for patients. When the biggest motivator is a profit for health care companies and their shareholders, patient care suffers.

Her other big takeaway is that "treatment can be imbued with kindness and compassion so that caring for ohers feels like the act of grace that it is." The care that people get should not depend on where they live, their skin color or the amount of money they have. Health care is a basic human right.

Healing is an important book, as most of us will face health care crises either as a patient or as the loved one of a patient. I highly recommend it. Brown is also the author of The Shift, about her work as a nurse.

Thanks to Algonquin Books for putting me on Theresa Brown's book tour. show less