A Year-long Night: Tales of a Medical Internship - Softcover

Klitzman M.D., Dr Robert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1450213510 ISBN 13: 9781450213516

Publisher: iUniverse, 2010

Synopsis

"There are extraordinary moments...[The book] describe[s] the tension between the endless stress and the fantastic learning curve of his 'Year-long Night'". --Washington Post 
"At some point in each of our lives, it's likely we'll find ourselves a hospital patient. Reading [this book] will go a long way in preparation for that event." --Cleveland Plain Dealer "Klitzman's first--a frank and compassionate account of his intern year in an unnamed hospital, told in prose as clean and precise and gleaming with promise as a surgeon's scalpel. Klitzman emphasizes the human side of the hospital: the suffering and fragile mortality of patients; the frightening, funny, wearying routines of doctors and nurses.... What binds these tales is Ktitzman's fresh and honest voice, at times awestruck or shocked but never jaded, whether confessing his initial revulsion to operations (""A blue whiff of smoke wafted up from the burning tissue and curled into my nostrils. . .The next thing I knew, a nurse was assisting me out of the darkened room. . .""); pride in sewing stitches into a slashed stomach; or terror at electroshocking a heart-attack victim (""The body jerked up tensely. . .I felt stunned, as if the current had passed through my own moist palms and seared my heart""). And then there are deft descriptions of colleagues--a studious radiologist, an unusually kind nurse--and, the book's heart, of patients: a calvacade of ravaged humanity including a leukemia-stricken accountant undergoing painful chemotherapy; a paralyzed woman communicating only by blinking; and a sufferer of Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, whose tale sends Klitzman spinning into a humble, concluding account of his pre-intern months spent doctoring amongst New Guinea tribespeople. An extraodinary complement to Perri Klass' more procedure-oriented A Not Entirely Benign Procedure (1987), Klitzman's memoir stands out for its fine writing, unblinking internal probing, external observation, and humaneness." -- Kirkus Reviews"A Year-long Night provides a fascinating tour of the culture of a hospital...[Klitzman's] voice is even-keeled, subtly critical, and observant." --David Leavitt

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

A Yale Medical School graduate, Klitzman joins the ranks of young doctors whose emotionally charged first year of internship impels them to record their initial experiences of suffering, healing and death. Each of his medical rotations is represented by short episodes, usually centered around a single patient. Indeed, what distinguishes this account from others of its kind is not only literary promise, but the author's interest in patients as human beings with distinct personalities whose identities and wishes he respectsqualities that should serve him well in his present residency in psychiatry at a New York hospital. A particularly interesting chapter is devoted to a year spent in a New Guinea village researching a disease linked with cannibalism.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: iUniverse
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 1450213510
• ISBN 13: 9781450213516
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256