1 comments about The Closest Of Strangers.

1. This is a must have for those whom practice medicine with God in mind

5 comments about At Face Value: My Triumph Over a Disfiguring Cancer.

1. This book is excellent; an outstanding inspiration! I found myself laughing and crying in the span of 15 seconds and applauding his bravery with each turn of the page. Terry is a wonderful example of how positive thinking, coupled with a strong faith, are instrumental in the healing process. But we also see his many other raw emotions, and how they're hard to fight in the thick of battle. Terry, thank you for being extra transparent, allowing us to identify with your story (even if we don't have cancer) and apply it to our own challenges.



2. Inspiring. If I ever feel sorry for myself I will just pick up this book. Quite a story. Quite a personality. (I felt I got to know Terry personally.) And, I was thoroughly entertained with the story he was telling. Most of all....his book will help me face life with a better attitude.
   
   JIM RICE



3. As a fellow sarcoma survivor, my journey with a different type of sarcoma, in a different location, was similar. Terry's recounting of his journey was helpful for me. It reinforced that the numerous emotions that one goes through both during and after the battles, however different are part of the process of healing. Like Terry, part of me is disfigured, but I have accepted the scars as battle wounds, as a reminder that I have won and life goes on. Terry put into words the very emotions that I encountered these past few years. Unless one goes down this dark path firsthand, it is very difficult to understand what living with cancer is like. I highly recommend this book for everyone, not just therapists, patients and caregivers. Terry wrote the book like he is telling his tale to his friends. His message is a great wake-up call to all, to not pre-judge others on appearances. There is a story behind every scar. Read the book, then pass it on to a friend. Thank you, Terry, for writing your story.



4. "At Face Value" details author Terry Healey's brush with death and his conversion from a focus on the externals of life to the fabric that makes up the human spirit. Healey, diagnosed with a fibrosarcoma while a college student, is a cancer survivor today. In "At Face Value," Healey chronicles his years-long journey from the initial, agonizing diagnosis through more than thirty surgical procedures and radiation treatments he endured.
   
   Healey was not sure if he would survive the cancer, as it reoccurred. Once survival was a real possibility, he had to deal with having to never look "normal" as the fibrosarcoma radically disfigured his appearance, particularly his face. Thoughts of death and stares by friends and strangers were constant companions.
   
   The author says "the book is not about cancer disfigurement but a much broader issue, society's quick judgment of people based on the superficial" and "our need to look beyond appearances." We need to look deeper, and focus on the internal fabric that makes up the human spirit.
   
   The book explores the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual challenges faced by those forced on people faced with a serious life-threatening and disfiguring illness (or accident). These challenges are not unique to Healey. For example, a spiritual challenge most of us can identify with is our daily relationship with God. "I felt guilty about wanting to ask God for good health and favorable pathology results...why I only paid special visits to church when I needed help. Why couldn't I stop by church to say a few thanks now and then?...We all get caught up in our lives and tend to pray only when we're facing a major obstacle or illness ...eventhough (sic) I knew prayer always helps."
   
   Today, Healey is a board member of the Wellness Community - helping others facing a life threatening illness - and is a highly sought after motivational speaker.



5. This book is a great read for anyone who wants to know just how indomitable the human spirit can be. Terry's story is written in a refreshingly candid style, giving us access to places that many authors seemingly avoid. By showing us his deepest fears and greatest challenges, he ultimately takes us on a journey of touching triumph.
   
   While there are several amazing aspects to this book, I found the most moving and enlightening area to be his description of re-inventing himself "from the inside out." Virtually all of us have made up stories about ourselves that keep us separate from others. Terry 's illumination of this process can help each and every one of us to dispel those myths and ultimately enjoy much closer relationships - both with others and ourselves.

No comments about Ruth Jackson, MD: A Life on the Leading Edge.

3 comments about New American Streamline Destinations - Advanced: Destinations Workbook B (Units 41-80): B (New American Streamline).

1. I'd like to learn english and I hope this book help me.



2. I'm an ESL teacher and I've used this collection for over 3 years to teach adults. I have many students who have learned using it and in my household only there are 3 of them. Yes, I've taught my own family! It's filled with great exercises, fun lessons and easy to do step-by-step class plans. Buy it, it'll change your method. With this books you don't even need the flash cards!



3. This is the best way to practice the grammar from each chapter of the book. I have been studying with other books as well and I can say this book and the workbook are one of the best I have found to improve my English.

No comments about Conversations with My Healers: My Journey to Wellness from Breast Cancer.

1 comments about Una And Her Paupers: Memorials of Agnes Elizabeth Jones.

1. I found this book both moving and inspiring, really reminding me why many of us became nurses - to CARE. It was very interesting too to read about Agnes's nurse training at Kaiserwerth, the same school as Florence Nightingale - gosh, they were strict!! The account of Agnes's work in the workshouse is also fasciniating.

No comments about Psychiatrist of America: The Life of Henry Stack Sullivan (Belknap Press).

5 comments about The Price of a Penis and Other Tales of a Country Surgeon.

1. What a marvelous, captivating and mind boggling journey with the author from the horrors of war-ravaged Europe, to the "Land of Opportunity". Dr. Iwasiuk paints a portrait of his life and his times that ranges from knee-slapping humor to painful and gut-wrenching analysis of social issues, to terse and incisive philosophical and political commentary. This is a page-turning, must-read work by an author who knows how to grab and hold his audience!



2. Best book I have read in a long time. It contains dramatic and informative life experiences with laughs in between. I learned a lot about surgical procedures, diseases and patients. Dr Iwasiuk operated on me for a recently discovered Lymphoma and I feel very fortunate to be one of his patients.



3. I received this book for Christmas from my daughter-in-law. I loved this book. I enjoyed all of it. The stories of his career were so interesting. The book is so easy to read. My sister-in-law also couldn't put it down until she finished it all, she loved all of his stories and all of the history.
   Dr Iwasiuk, writes in such a way that it is very easy to read and enjoy. What an interesting life story! Rella Legere and Lorraine Milne-Sanford, Maine



4. As I read this book, it did not take long to find this as an autobiography, and a good one. Dr. Iwasiuk's background is very similar to my mother's background and this book brought back many discussions that I had with my mom about her and her father's background.
   
   Dr. Iwasiuk's viewpoints on numerous issues are very similar to mine. He hit the nail on the head, so to speak, with comments about Camarillo State Hospital and the homeless people wandering around now. That hospital should have been kept open and be in use today.
   
   Also, the problems with today's health care delivery are so true. Health insurance needs to be available for everyone and not just the healthy. True, we do need to take care of our health as well.
   
   When I moved to California many years ago, a doctor at work said to me, "Good luck in California. Everyone is sue crazy out there." How right he was, but it is now that way all over. So Dr. Iwasiuk's comments about malpractice insurance and lawsuits are so true.
   
   So, all in all, I found this an enjoyable book to read. I suspect that since I work in the medical field and know Dr. Iwasiuk, that I may have been influenced to read this book. I also know that I would have enjoyed reading this without being in the medical field or knowing the doctor.
   
   And for everyone's information, I am not a doctor.



5. First, I know and work with Dr. Iwasiuk in a professional capacity. This is how I heard about his book. I purchased two copies and gave one to a writer friend. His book is a very insightful and interesting read. I can also tell you that Dr. Iwasiuk objectively has an excellent reputation as a surgeon and does very high quality work. He is pleasant and always has a very reasoned insight into a multitude of subjects based on logical and well researched assessments of the nature of our world and our lives.
   
   Quite frankly his logic is hard to argue with. He for example discusses how Democracies have a natural 'life-cycle' and if we all are not careful, they can extinguish themselves due to imperfections in human nature.
   
   One part I did want to correct is that in the book Dr. Iwasiuk mentioned a doctor he worked with who was a married man who left his wife and family to marry an extremely beautiful nurse, and they left to what he wrote was Israel.
   
   When I read that it just did not sound quite right, but you never know. I asked him and he acknowledged that based upon the advise of his attorney, he changed the religion of the doctor, and the name of the country in that story. I can tell you that the doctor involved was NOT Jewish, and did NOT move to Israel. There is enough pain in the world related to antisemitism that I believed it better to correct this than to let it stand for posterity since Dr. Iwasiuk is such a credible and careful distiller of truth. I am sure Dr. Iwasiuk never considered that such a minor change (that he made) could increase the possibility of antisemitism, but anything not totally accurate that can justify negative judgments should by all rights be corrected.
   
   I am also impressed that Dr. Iwasiuk was so truthful that he shared very hidden and buried secrets about his own family that were not known and not many people would have done this.
   
   Dr. Iwasiuk is a beacon of reason in a world filled with irrational beliefs.
   
   His book contains many insights and truths regarding our history, our future and the human condition.
   
   I am looking forward to his next book about religion.

5 comments about Bitter Ice: A Memoir of Love, Food, and Obsession.

1. Although it was a fascinating story, this was a hard book to read. It was hard to be sympathetic to the characters -- Barbara because of her incessent whinning about how tough her life with a wealthy family was and how unfair that she didn't have a trust fund like her siblings, and him because he had absolutely no redeeming qualities. There is nothings likable about Tom, and the reader isn't cheering for his recovery. He is obviously mentally ill and utterly self-involved from the very beginning, and why she doesn't recognize this is puzzling. So is the fact that she stays with this lunatic for *25 years*. She doesn't love him, she doesn't need him, he's ruining her life... but still she stays. She never confronts the fact that she's co-dependant, and it leaves with reader with the idea that she stuck around because living with a sick, twisted man made for fascinating material. I'm not convinced that his problem was anorexia -- he had obvious mental and social problems before he started starving himself, and I felt that the anorexia was simply another syndrome of whatever was wrong with him. That a bright, successful, wealthy woman would stay with someone like him and tolerate his gross, controlling behavior left me shaking my head. Why Barbara, why?



2. Although I read more than a few reviews of this book that chided Barbara Lawrence for being a whinning, affluent woman who simply contributed to her husbands problems, I disagree. Rather, I found Ms. Lawrence's memoir to be a courageous and honest account of her struggles living with an eating disordered person, while also battling her own demons. Rarely do we get a look at things from the perspective of anyone but the person with the disorder. But Ms. Lawrence had her own story to tell, and I thnk she did a fine job of telling it. Having an eating disorder myself, I was heartened by Ms. Lawrence's ability to lay bear her own complicity in the dysfunction of her marriage in a compassionate and forthright way. I was somewhat surprised that she wasn't more proactive when it came to helping Tom seek treatment, but only a little. I don't think it was so much a function of naivete, as it was denial (of how bad things were, of how misguided her decision was to marry Tom in the first place, of the extent to which fear and a sense of unworthiness defined her existence) that motivated her? Although my own socio-economic background could not be more different from the author's I did not find this a barrier to sympathy or understanding. Instead, the strength of the book to me was in her ability to allow us to fully enter her complex inner life, and the struggle for wholeness I believe she is finally waging with success. As for the person who blithely commented that he/she was not surprised that Tom 'got better' when he found someone other than Barbara to be with, don't kid yourself people, eating disorders are about the sufferers pathology. Which is to say, no one can either make us sick or well. That awesome task remains our own.



3. I was a little unhappy with this book. Not because the author isn't a decent writer, but because from the description of the book I thought this book was about the life of a male anorexic. The book, however, is mostly about the authors life (wife of the anorexic), not her husband. I did not buy this book to read about the life of a wife of an anorexic, but to take a rare look into the life of a male anorexic. This book jsut didn't provide that. It is still, over all, a good book, which is why I still gave it 3 stars.



4. I read this book to read about a man with anorexia, not about the boring life of a woman married to him. I skimmed through the whole book to try to find the tiny paragraphs scattered throughout that are actually about his eating disorder. In my opinion, she uses his eating disorder to tell the dull, dry tale of her own life. Don't read this book, even if you don't care about reading about eating disorders.



5. Hate to say it, but I found myself doing the same thing as the reviewer named Leslie: leafing through the book, searching for passages about the author's husband's illness, and not passages where in which she talks about herself. I was disappointed by this book, and found it nearly impossible to care about the people in it. I thought I would have been left thinking more about what became of them and wondering about the author and her family's well-being, but all I thought was, eh.

1 comments about Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton: Civil War Surgeon, 1861-1865 (Shawnee Classics (Reprinted)).

1. I think this book is a must read for all Civil War enthusiasts. This book is very descriptive and worth the money and time of getting it. I think that all persons that are literare should read this book.