I Need an Operation...Now What?: A Patient's Guide to a Safe and Successful Outcome
Author: Thomas R Russell
A patient's guide to a safe and successful outcome
I Need an Operation . . . Now What? gives patients the information they need to boost their chances of having a successful surgical experience, with the best possible results. Written in patient-friendly, non-technical language, this book is designed to help patients understand the process of having an operation from start to finish. Inside this complete and compassionate manual, patients will learn:
• How to find a qualified surgeon who is right for their situation
• When to get, and how to go about finding a second opinion
• How to ask about the risks and benefits of having an operation...and much more!
Doody Review Services
Reviewer:Carol EH Scott-Conner, MD, PhD(University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics)
Description:This slender paperback contains a wealth of information for anyone facing surgery. Unique features include boxes addressing "Things to Ask the Surgeon," "Insiders Tips," and "Patient Perspectives.""
Purpose:The purpose is to make having an operation "an easier experience" for the reader. The author believes that informed patients will be better able to participate actively in their care, which will lead to better communication and better outcomes. The book succeeds admirably at these simple and worthy objectives.
Audience:The book is written for anyone who needs an operation. The author is a surgeon, a surgical leader, and a person who has undergone surgery himself. He is thus triply qualified.
Features:An introductory chapter is designed to put readers at ease with asking difficult questions and ascertaining the need for the procedure and the qualifications of the surgeon. It then progresses naturally through decision for surgery, choice of surgeon, preparation and day of surgery, postoperative phases (both in hospital and after discharge). Three appendixes provide additional information and names of authoritative web sites.
Assessment:There is an amazing amount of information in this book. Specific procedures are not discussed in detail, but rather used (through the patient vignettes) to illustrate particular points. The author does not hesitate to call a spade a spade, counseling patients, for example, "Make sure all health care providers wash their hands before..."in one of the "Insider's Tips." I hope this book is widely distributed; it fills a needed gap in patient education material.
What People Are Saying
Along with your love and support, the greatest gift you can give a loved one or friend facing or weighing the benefits and risks of surgery is a copy of this book. With his thoughtful, clear, very accessible writing, Dr. Russell, with the American College of Surgeons, provides a wealth of informational resources that every patient can draw on. He gives excellent advice on how to ask good questions and become an informed, empowered consumer. Most importantly, he urges you, the patient, to "take control and become fully informed about your options." This book will help you do that, prepare you for the effects of surgery and how to deal with them and give you confidence as you navigate through the health care system.
—Helen Darling, president of the National Business Group on Health
Like a true professional, Dr. Russell gives surgical patients-to-be all the information and support needed to make decisions that meet their needs as only they can know them. This book is not only practical, but also highly respectful, most educational. Patients can use this book to navigate through their surgical experience while we all push for a better organized health care delivery system.
—Richard J. Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association
Every year millions of Americans face the prospect of surgery with a great deal of fear and uncertainty. Dr. Thomas Russell's book provides patients and their families with critical information on such questions like "Do I need this surgery?" to "How do I protect myself from medical errors?" and "When can I go home?" Written in clear English, the book can allow people to undergo surgery with all of the information they need to help make it a safe and successful operation.
— Margaret E. O'Kane, president, National Committee for Quality Assurance
Via this well-crafted book and other expressions of his national leadership, Thomas Russell shows remarkable empathy for patients seeking to minimize their surgical risk. His practical suggestions embed great sensitivity to the public's right to know about a surgeon's prior results, to be told when unexpected events occur, and how difficult it is for many patients to advocate for themselves. Buy this book for your parents......and be prepared to borrow it back from them.
—Arnold Milstein MD, Medical Director, Pacific Business Group on Health
Books about: Hope Recovery or Explosive Running
Having Faith
Author: Sandra Steingraber
As an ecologist, Sandra Steingraber spent her professional life observing how living things interact with their environments. Now, 38 and pregnant, she had become a habitat-for a population of one.
Having Faith is Steingraber's exploration of the intimate ecology of motherhood. Using her scientist's eye to study the biological drama of new life being knit from the molecules of air, food, and water flowing into her body, she looks at the environmental hazards that now threaten pregnant and breastfeeding women, and examines the effects these toxins can have on a child. Having Faith makes the metamorphosis of a few cells into a baby astonishingly vivid, and the dangers to human reproduction urgently real.
Economist
Intelligent, thoughtful and beautifully written, Steingraber's book...deserves to be called a classic.
Mothering Magazine
Very well written ... a persuasive call to action.
Toronto Star
[Having Faith] is invaluable...Its content informs as the language sings.
Earthmatters
Lyrical...Read it to find out why [Steingraber] is being called the next Rachel Carson.
Brain Child
With the ear of a poet...Steingraber weaves the personal and the political in a startingly fresh, wholly convincing way.
Publishers Weekly
Steingraber (Living Downstream) offers the commonest of stories how she got pregnant, gave birth and fed her baby in a most uncommon way. A cross between the quirkily thorough detail of Natalie Angier's science-writing and the passionate environmental advocacy of Rachel Carson, Steingraber's style would have been insufferably heroic if the pregnancy had been smooth, mind-over-matter. Instead, it's one long tale of everywoman's worst moments from the urge-to-pee problem to the terrible nausea of morning sickness followed by "round ligament pain" (these are "the bungee cords that anchor the uterus in place"), Braxton-Hicks contractions (which "rehearse the body for labor") and the general nuttiness of each trimester of pregnancy. Readers can identify with being ideologically opposed to, say, episiotomies, but then agreeing to one under the duress of childbirth. The climax, however, is not her daughter Faith's birth, but the dilemma over the safety of breastfeeding. The medical benefits of breast milk are compelling: it provides excellent nutrition and important immunities. But with rising environmental pollution, biomagnification implies that deadly toxins like DDT and dioxin will concentrate in human milk, the top of the food chain. The only answer: fight this pollution and make the world safer for nursing babies. With humor Steingraber compares childbirth to rocking a car out of a snowdrift or angling big furniture through a small doorway to leaven the scientific forays, this is a positively riveting narrative. Parents-to-be or anyone concerned with environmental pollution will want to read and discuss this and act. (Nov.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
According to many popular guidebooks, pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting are happy experiences that proceed smoothly to bliss and contentment. Wolf and Steingraber beg to differ. Both feminist writer Wolf (The Beauty Myth) and Steingraber (Living Downstream: A Scientist's Personal Investigation of Cancer and the Environment), an ecologist at Cornell University, feel that consumer guides do not offer women enough information about the reality of the birth process. They argue that childbirth preparation classes make medical intervention seem harmless, normal, and expected. This leads women to stop trusting themselves and their bodies, allowing physicians to take control. But while the two authors agree about some issues, their respective books look at their own pregnancies from different points of view. Wolf focuses on how the psychological and social aspects of pregnancy and impending motherhood changed her sense of self. Coming from a generation of women who identify themselves as independent, equal, and entitled to power, she felt a sense of loss despite having wanted a child. She also began to reexamine some of her basic beliefs about a woman's right to choose and the balance of power in relationships. Wolf concludes that society neither values nor supports parents despite its emphasis on family values. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
The author of (1997) interweaves musings on her first pregnancy with information on new scientific discoveries and environmental threats to child development. Steingraber (Cornell U.) includes a list of further resources. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Kirkus Reviews
A terrifying tale of pregnancy and birth that sounds an alarm about the growing dangers of environmental toxins to parents and their babies. Biologist and ecologist Steingraber (Living Downstream, 1997) became pregnant at age 38, and determined to tell the story of the birth of her daughter, Faith, from an ecological point of view. Moving gracefully between hard science and tender personal anecdotes, she analyzes and explores the effects on her developing baby of the uterine environment, a "habitat . . . for a population of one." Describing studies on the development of the embryo, in which all the body parts are assembled and ready to grow by about week ten, her concentration on this "fantastical" process is interrupted by morning sickness. Research reveals that nausea in pregnancy remains a female mystery, like PMS and hot flashes, because "the tools of medical research have never been fully deployed to demystify it." Nor has research moved quickly to examine damage to the fetus from a deteriorating environment. For instance, the famously protective placenta is not a barrier against damage caused by pesticides, nicotine, PCBs, and other chemicals. A long and moving section on babies born with gross birth defects as a result of mercury in the food chain in Minamata, Japan, and the resistance of both government and industry to remove it, illustrates a recurring theme: that we live in a society that doesn't know enough or care enough about fetal health. Steingraber carries her concerns past delivery (complaining in passing about the emphasis on medical intervention-like routine episiotomies-in childbirth) to breastfeeding. The rewards are undeniable, but the risks are growing ascontaminants in the environment increase, finding their way to mother's milk and affecting, in particular, the further development of the baby's brain. An afterword offers a list of organizations active in struggling for a healthy environment and reducing birth defects. A convincing case that the increasing numbers of babies born with barriers to optimal development are a consequence of environmental insults. Should send parents and would-be parents to the barricades. Author tour
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