"One of the greatest challenges patients and their families face is how to evaluate and act on medical advice. Swept up in the rush of events, anxious about the prognosis, facing a blur of technical jargon, fatigued from worry or pain, people who are ill are easily overwhelmed by treatment choices. Told in eight gripping clinical dramas, [this book] reveals the forces at play in making critical medical decisions. Dr. Jerome Groopman illuminates the world of medicine, where knowledge is imperfect, no therapy is without risks, and the outcome is never fully predictable. It portrays moments of astute diagnosis and misguided perception, of lifesaving triumphs and shattering failures. These real-life lessons prepare us to traverse the uncertain terrain of illness, and enable us to balance intuition and information, and thereby make the best possible decisions about our health and future.

A healing path using the power of dreams, theater, poetry, and shamanism • Shows how psychological realizations can cause true transformation when manifested by concrete poetic acts • Includes many examples of the surreal but successful actions Jodorowsky has prescribed to those seeking his help While living in Mexico, Alejandro Jodorowsky became familiar with the colorful and effective cures provided by folk healers. He realized that it is easier for the unconscious to understand the language of dreams than that of rationality. Illness can even be seen as a physical dream that reveals unresolved emotional and psychological problems. Psychomagic presents the shamanic and genealogical principles Jodorowsky discovered to create a healing therapy that could use the powers of dreams, art, and theater to empower individuals to heal wounds that in some cases had traveled through generations. The concrete and often surreal poetic actions Jodorowsky employs are part of an elaborate strategy intended to break apart the dysfunctional persona with whom the patient identifies in order to connect with a deeper self. That is when true transformation can manifest. For a young man who complained that he lived only in his head and was unable to grab hold of reality and advance toward the financial autonomy he desired, Jodorowsky gave the prescription to paste two gold coins to the soles of his shoes so that all day he would be walking on gold. A judge whose vanity was ruling his every move was given the task of dressing like a tramp and begging outside one of the fashionable restaurants he loved to frequent while pulling glass doll eyes out of his pockets. The lesson for him was that if a tramp can fill his pockets with eyeballs, then they must be of no value, and thus the eyes of others should have no bearing on who you are and what you do. Taking his patients directly at their words, Jodorowsky takes the same elements associated with a negative emotional charge and recasts them in an action that will make them positive and enable them to pay the psychological debts hindering their lives.

Is There a Doctor in the House? Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . . •How do people in wheelchairs have sex? •Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast? •Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever? •Why does asparagus make my pee smell? •Why do old people grow hair on their ears? •Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true? . . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you. Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, bestselling author and well-known satirist, Why Do Men Have Nipples? offers real factual and really funny answers to some of the big questions about the oddities of our bodies.

Timely and provocative essays on bioethical questions brought to the forefront by the bioterrorist threat. The war on terrorism and the threat of chemical and biological weapons have brought a new urgency to already complex moral and bioethical questions. In the Wake of Terror presents thought-provoking essays on many of the troubling issues facing American society, written by experts from the fields of medicine, health care policy, law, political science, history, philosophy, and theology. One of the first potential casualties of catastrophic circumstances is civil liberties. In the past, medical experiments conducted for national security purposes have violated ethical standards, and this book questions whether current policy provides sufficient safeguards against further abuses. It also focuses on public health issues, offering contrasting views on the extent to which civil authorities should be allowed to restrict freedom of movement in the name of national security and debating whether aggressive public health interventions improve public confidence and cooperation or detract from them. A major area of concern is preparedness for future terrorist attacks. Chapters are devoted to ethical issues involved in the development, distribution, and rationing of vaccines and antidotes; resource allocation and medical triage; the moral duties of emergency health workers and other first responders; and the obligations of private entities such as managed care organizations and pharmaceutical companies. Contributors also address the implications of terrorism for our health insurance system and the role of genetic advances in bioterrorism. Underlying all of these issues, the authors argue, is the need to maintain a spirit of social solidarity, which can in turn only be achieved if preparations are publicly acknowledged and generally regarded as both prudent and fair.

BOOK

CONGRATULATIONS! Your purchase of this book means that the admissions committee has thoroughly reviewed your application and we are pleased to welcome you to the Why Do Men Have Nipples School of Medicine.* *A not quite fully accredited institution Let’s Play Doctor is your instant guide to becoming a Real Fake Doctor. At the Why Do Men Have Nipples School of Medicine, we offer an informative, immersive, and incredibly entertaining course of study that will give you the special skills needed to get your M.D. on! By following the lessons in Let’s Play Doctor , you’ll learn: • Special mental exercises to give yourself that buff, bulging Doctor brain • How to impress your peers with big, polysyllabic, esoteric medical lingo (can you say pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanokoniosis?) • Easy ways to diagnose your girlfriend’s goiter or your father’s fistula • Do-it-yourself surgeries from hemorrhoidectomy to breast enlargement • And, most important, how to craft a completely believable, official-sounding get-out-of-work-for-medical-reasons note Tuition? Just $14.95. Enroll today! It’s time to play doctor!