{"product_id":"on-having-a-heart-attack-a-medical-memoir-paperback-softback-9780268037260","title":"On Having a Heart Attack; A Medical Memoir (Paperback \/ softback) 9780268037260","description":"\u003cfont face=\"Georgia\"\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"6\"\u003eOn Having a Heart Attack\u003c\/font\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\r\n\u003cfont size=\"5\"\u003eA Medical Memoir\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"4\"\u003eWilliam O'Rourke (Author)\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e9780268037260\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003ePaperback \/ softback, published 8 April 2006\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e168 pages, - 1 Illustrations, black and white\u003cbr\u003e21.6 x 14 x 0.9 cm, 0.202 kg\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"Books about heart attacks and heart disease abound, mostly authored by health care professionals who specialize in the treatment of heart patients or work as nutritionists. Books written by actual survivors of an MI . . . are rare and a book, such as this, written by someone who is both a survivor and a noted author, is certainly the exception . . . this memoir is much more than just a self-help book. The author examines the many personal thoughts the patient stricken by a heart attack unavoidably encounters. . . . It is a book that doctors and nurses should read and learn from, and one that all those should read who are potentially threatened with heart disease.\" —\u003ci\u003eThird Coast\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"This very personal account of exactly what it was like to have a heart attack, to notice medical personnel somewhat hesitant to treat him until they saw his insurance card, to contemplate the possibility of dying before his son turned two, and to make lifestyle changes to lower the risk of a second attack is frightening, moving and sometimes funny.\" —\u003ci\u003eBooklist\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"A must-read for practicing physicians, cardiologists, nurses, physician assistants, and the general public. . . . [T]his is an excellent, thoroughly informed book. It will be helpful for recuperating patients and their families and for anyone concerned about heart disease.\" —\u003ci\u003eJournal of the American Medical Association\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"For anyone who has ever had a serious medical crisis, or been close to someone who has, William O'Rourke's book is essential reading. O'Rourke takes us on a fascinating, compelling journey into the literal and figurative heart of a gloriously full and fragile life. He illuminates much about our vitality and our mortality, and the ways in which fortune and modern medicine can collaborate in our individual and collective fates. This is a rich tale by a splendid storyteller—a most unforgettable, informative, and deeply moving memoir of one man's struggles and triumphs.\" —Jay Neugeboren, author of \u003ci\u003eOpen Heart: A Patient's Story of Life-Saving Medicine and Life-Giving Friendship\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"Despite its somber subject, the book is as gripping as fiction, full of drama, conflict, and angst. . . . While convalescing, O'Rourke read all he could find in the literature of MI (myocardial infarction) but met with a singular lack of comprehensive accounts of the physical and psychic experience itself, and how it affects the family and friends of the patient. This he supplies with wry wit and unsparing rue, distillations of the novelist's second nature-attentiveness in calamity, and richness of recall.\" —\u003ci\u003eProvincetown Arts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"In the first few pages of William O'Rourke's gripping book I learned what it feels like to have a heart attack and how the press or pleasure of daily events can keep us postponing the visit to the Emergency Room. Now, I tell myself, I'll be prepared even in the middle of the night or at a sports event. Thanks to my husband's many years of MS, I did have an idea of how important a good doctor, a ready wife or husband, an eagle eye for proceedings, and even chance can be in determining one's future—but the uninitiated in such mysteries will find \u003ci\u003eOn Having A Heart Attack\u003c\/i\u003e to be full of first person insights. Besides, if it has already happened to O'Rourke, maybe it won't happen to his readers!\" —Maggie Strong, author of \u003ci\u003eMainstay: For the Well Spouse of the Chronically Ill\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"The story of William O'Rourks's heart attack is as compelling as a thriller because it \u003ci\u003eis\u003c\/i\u003e a thriller. As always, O'Rourke's prose is crisp, witty, and wholly original. The chronicle of his recovery demystifies a frightening illness, leaving a reader enlightened and, unexpectedly, cheered.\" —Valerie Sayers, author of \u003ci\u003eBrian Fever\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eDue East\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e\"O'Rourke' s book and its long description of having a heart attack may scare the bejesus out of you, but it certainly sheds a lot of light on the subject. He's writing about what he knows and he knows a lot. His book is full of life—full of heart—and necessary reading for anyone who's ever thought twice about the tough organ that keeps us alive.\" —Malachy McCourt, author of A\u003ci\u003e Monk Swimming\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eBush Lies in State\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\u003cp align=\"justify\"\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cfont size=\"3\"\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"As I walked away with my refreshments, I felt something peculiar. It was so strange it stopped me mid-step. I was forty-five years old, and I had felt many things, but never before this particular feeling: I felt a click deep inside. The image the sensation produced in my mind was of a BB, a small round piece of copper-colored lead, falling into a socket. It was a very clear image. A BB is tiny, but the one I imagined felt infinitesimal, microscopic. Yet I felt it, a click, metal on metal—like an expensive, microscopic gear had slipped, some exquisite piece of machinery falling out of alignment. Some medieval example of craftsmanship, a gyroscope, something intricate, needing fine balance. The feeling, the event, was located in my chest, below my left breast. It was thoroughly interior, as if a signal had been sent and registered, what those giant satellite dishes are poised waiting for, a transmission from deep space.\" —from Chapter 1 \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThat was October 26, 1991, in what became a singularly awful day in the life of William O'Rourke. Minutes later, at the beginning of a Notre Dame football game, he began to suffer his heart attack. O'Rourke's account of that day, and everything that followed, is personal, informative, humorous, and highly literate. With its extended description of what an MI feels like and how people around the patient react, his memoir provides a bedside view of his experience and all of the emotions—both extraordinary and quotidian—that accompanied it. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhat is startling is how that momentous event, the heart attack, divides life irretrievably into a \"before\" and \"after.\" Gone are the assumptions of what is safe and healthy; replacing them is a newly-forged relation of mind and body, a treacherous one which breeds a physical paranoia that only lessens after months. O'Rourke vividly describes the extreme pain of the attack, the forced inactivity of recuperation, and the melancholy of embracing life anew while accepting a heightened awareness of mortality. He knows his luck in having supportive family and friends, and uses his time away from normal routine to examine his family history for likely genetic proclivities for heart disease. \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eThrough his description of his experience—from MI, to angioplasty, to cardiac catheterization to, fourteen years later, a quintuple bypass and a second round of cardio-rehabilitation—he asks us to change behaviors we can affect and pay attention to our health. It does, after all, come down to this: \"Here's to life.\" \u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eEnriched with a medical glossary and selected bibliography, this is a helpful compendium for other recuperating patients and their families, or anyone concerned about heart disease, or interested in memoir.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/font\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\u003c\/font\u003e","brand":"University of Notre Dame Press","offers":[{"title":"Brand New","offer_id":52526106018072,"sku":"9780268037260","price":18.89,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/freshlyprintedbooks.co.uk\/products\/on-having-a-heart-attack-a-medical-memoir-paperback-softback-9780268037260","provider":"Freshly Printed Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}