What happens to a nurse in the cancer ward when she becomes a patient? Inside of Healing by Theresa Brown, the author describes her experiences battling cancer, first-hand experiences getting (and understanding) treatment, and reflecting on her interaction with patients.
But first, about the book
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. Why is she so often left in the dark about procedures and treatments? Why is she expected to research her own best treatment options? Why is there so much red tape? At times she’s mad at herself for not speaking up and asking for what she needs but knows that being a “difficult” patient could mean she gets worse care.
Of the almost four million women in this country living with breast cancer, many have had, like Brown, a treatable form of the disease. Both unnerving and extremely relatable, her experience shows us how our for-profit health care industry “cures” us but at the same time leaves so many of us feeling alienated and uncared for. As she did so brilliantly in her New York Times bestseller, The Shift, Brown relays the unforgettable details of her daily life—the needles, the chemo drugs, the rubber gloves, the bureaucratic frustrations—but this time from her new perch as a patient, 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. “People failed me when I was a patient and I failed patients when working as a nurse. I see that now,” she writes.
Healing is must-read for all of us who have tried to find healing through our health-care system.
My Review
What an eye-opening book! This gives you a first-hand experience of two sides of the coin: the patient and the nurse. Theresa Brown does an amazing job bringing us close inside of her journey to get the treatments she needs and how she has treated other patients. It’s such a vivid, raw story that shows me close details of what a cancer diagnosis can do to a person. It’s a powerful book that I highly recommend anyone to read.
Add it to your GoodReads reading list. Purchase it on Amazon or Bookshop.org.
That sounds like quite a read.