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Direct Red: A Surgeon's View of Her Life-or-Death Profession
Product Type: Book
Product Price: $14.99
Manufacturer: Harper Paperbacks
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Description
Surgeons have long been known for their allergy to doubt, an unsurprising trait in professionals who must play God, routinely risking someone else's life to do their job. But in this illuminating memoir, Gabriel Weston reveals the emotions, passions, and doubts normally hidden behind a surgeon's mask.
Interweaving her own story with those of her patients, old and young, Weston evokes both the humor and the heartbreak that come from medicine's daily confrontation with the ultimate unknowability of the human body. With prose that does not flinch from the raw, graphic realities of a surgeon's day, Weston confronts life, death, and the unique difficulties of being a female surgeon in a heavily male-dominated profession.
Reviews
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2010-04-23
Summary: "A new viewpoint"
This book describes the viewpoints of a female British physician (surgeon) on her journey through med school, residency, etc. The author shares some very sensitive topics that she's had to ponder along the way. The process and intricacies of surgery are described in explicit detail and it really opens your eyes to what surgeons do and face on a routine basis (without all the fluff). I am a nursing student and found this insightful because we don't really get this kind of explanation of the roles of the MDs we work with. Definitely worthwhile.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2010-02-18
Summary: "Engaging new voice in medical memoir"
I'm a big fan of the medical memoir genre, and have really enjoyed books by Tilda Shalof and Michael Collins in particular. This book is along the same lines - a lot of stories about what it's really like to be in the medical profession, with lots of insight into the different kinds of people that become doctors, nurses, or surgeons, and the different things people go through when they have an illness or injury.
Gabriel Weston's voice is very casual and she uses a lot of cool British slang that brings her words to life in this book. I felt like I was sitting down with a friend who told me all kinds of interesting stories and let me into her world. Every time I dipped into this book I got lost in it and didn't want to put it down.
It is a little too short and doesn't have any overarching narrative or any real ending, but that's OK, because I was engaged throughout by the small stories and dramas that make up a medical life. If you enjoy medical memoir then you'll really enjoy this new voice in the genre. If you're new to medical memoir, I'd recommend starting with Hot Lights, Cold Steel by Collins first. It has enough of a connecting thread through the story that you'll get a good (and funny!) intro to the genre, and if you like it you can come back to this book to find some new stories about medical life.
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-12-14
Summary: "An enjoyable first hand account with an abrupt ending"
I love to read about different careers from a first hand experience and for the most part enjoyed Direct Red.
The author works so hard to become accepted as a female attending surgeon and come to terms with her interesting career. It comes as a surprise, when out of the blue, Weston reveals she's given up her full-time career to be a part-timer and hang out at home. What? It's not foreshadowed or even really explained, beyond wanting to spend more time with her baby.
Weston kind of shuffles that part under the carpet at the end of her memoir, leaving me feeling unsatisfied. Why did she try hard to be accepted into a male dominated profession if her heart wasn't really into it? Why write a book on the subject at all?
I am not saying that a woman should not try to created a balanced home and work life, or that Weston made a poor choice in the end. I'm glad that she's reached a point of serenity for herself!
What I *am* saying is that it seems a major let-down, to have the author, in the last few paragraphs of the book, reveal that she doesn't actually achieve her goal. Weston even admits to feeling sad sometimes about her choice, about giving up her dreams.
Otherwise, Direct Red is a well-written personal account of Weston's surgical experiences. She unflinchingly describes the agonies of steeling herself against patient pain, to develop a needed surgical toughness without also losing her compassion completely. She thrills at being included in procedures new to her, nearly collapses after seven tiring hours of holding a neck open and blushes at her first urinary catheter insertion. She comes face to face (pun intended) with her feelings as a doctor about cosmetic vs lifesaving surgery. I like the passage where the title of the book is revealed as a calming litany of cellular stains. Weston is refreshingly honest in her detailed insights and experiences, stripping away the glamor of the surgical profession. We are left with a gritty imprint of exhaustion, triumph and heartbreak.
I enjoyed Weston's descriptions of each round in her rotations: dealing with birth (OB, which she found frustrating), death (including methodical autopsies and the pathos of death-bed vigils), and exhilarating stints in the ER and OR. Weston's grisly surgical assists are specifically detailed, frequently gruesome and intensely fascinating.
A good read and recommended overall, although I would have appreciated more of a narrative segue about the author's sudden-seeming decision to change her career goals.
Rating: 4 / 5
Date: 2009-12-07
Summary: "SWALLOW A DICTIONARY FIRST"
I loved this book but first a few things I didn't like:
1. It's too short. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted it to go on and on and was saddened when I realised I was already half way through.
2. The author is trying a little too hard to impress us by swallowing a dictionary and peppering the pages with obscure and little used words. Why use a normal word when a weird one will do - for example the use of "tryptych" is infinitely more impressive than "three". And "jocose" for "joyful". Bring it on girl - we are impressed......I think. And what is a "dysarthic voice" ? Goodness only knows.
3. Some of the writing is too mannered as if trying to impress a grand old uncle or aunt. And it is obvious that author has an English Literature degree - she never lets us forget it with references to great literary works thrown in at regular intervals.
4. It borders on Mills and Boon with descriptions of men folk as being "beautiful" and "handsome". My God I was expecting Heathciff or Mr Darcy to come galloping onto the ward. They never did - thank goodness. But this love interest was a bit tiresome.
But folks - this is a great read and I loved the book.
The author's honesty and obvious humanity is refreshing and her writing style is magical. This girl can really write well with beautiful sentence construction and imagery. She has mastered her craft.
I found her descriptions of the surgical manoeuvres utterly compelling and on occasions had to put the book down to gain a little equilibrium - some of it was too close to the bone (pun intended).
Although she has suffered from the privations of the English Private school system rendering her emotionally distant and a little sterile she nevertheless breaks through all of this and demonstrates a true love of humanity and a touching affection for many of her patients.
I was fascinated all of the way through and I feel that I now understand a lot more about surgery and hospital life. Who would want to be a doctor? Not I.
Rating: 5 / 5
Date: 2009-10-08
Summary: "No surprises but no less gripping and thought-provoking"
If you watch the nightly dramatizations of medical shows on television, you've seen no small number of life-death decisions made in emergency and operating rooms, and you may also have noticed that women comprise a large percentage of those responsible for making the calls, directing the team, consoling the patient, talking to the anxious relatives in the waiting room (not least of a physician-surgeon's responsibilities). I selected this book to learn more about my daughter's daily challenges, bearing in mind the possibility that I might pass it on to her. It's a detailed, unflinching, even graphic account, yet perhaps already all too familiar to my daughter, who covets the few spare moments she can find to devote to her own son's and daughter's learning, fun and growth.
I think that rather than pass this on to a professional, I'll paraphrase some of the points and pass them by her. I have no doubt that she'll readily agree with most of them and perhaps give qualifying approval to some of the other points. I know she's experienced sexist attitudes as much (perhaps even more) from her patients as her fellow colleagues. And I know she's found that locations of the country (she's worked the Midwest, East Coast, and West) as well as specific hospitals and clinics make a great deal of difference in the responsiveness and cooperation of patients. So any reader should be edified by, but at the same time cautioned about, making excessive generalizations based on some of the author's experiences.
While the author makes inarguable points about the challenge, at times practically super-human, demands, of the profession on the physician-surgeon, she does not include (or pretend to) all of the concerns and frustrations of patients, each of which is trying, sometimes heroically, to put the best face on an internal fear that basically can be expressed as a simple question: "Am I going to die?" Last night, Keith Olbermann said it better than anyone has in the entire history of the "boob tube." (It would be impossible to be more direct, less euphemistic, more personal, more expressive of what the mortal condition, the doctor's and hospital's roles are all about. In fact, Olbermann's analysis revealed much of the current anger--the tea parties, the town hall meetings, the Hitler death panel comparisons--for what they are: less about who pays than who dies and why. Arguing about insurance and money is admittedly a way to let off steam and become temporarily distracted from the inevitable, but as Olbermann made so eloquently and resonantly clear, it's no answer to the plea of virtually every mortal being: "Can I have another year, a month, a day? And if the king, president and CEO is granted the privilege, why not me as well?"
It's a question that every doctor, every patient and, yes, every parent responsible for the creation of yet another mortal being must be prepared to ask--either that, or let nature take its course, along with accepting America's continual slide among countries whose citizens expire at ever increasing if not alarming rates.