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Life as a paramedic, writes Sally Gould in this candid, witty memoir, can be traumatic, gross, dull, hilarious, magical. To make the cut, you need to be able to think outside the square, keep calm in the midst of chaos, be in possession of a strong stomach, and simply brush it off when patients die. That’s on top of having a profound understanding of the human body, plus the skills to counter its failings. It also helps to have a highly developed and oftentimes dark sense of humour.

For the many millions of headache sufferers and fans of Mary Roach, Siddartha Mukerjee, and Ed Yong, a deeply reported, sometimes harrowing, and frequently humorous journey into the author’s own excruciating headaches, and the science behind these surprisingly mysterious disorders that may, finally, offer relief.

For years, they came in on weekends to plan and practice—nearly sixty surgeons, nurses, and anesthesiologists, preparing to harmonize in a vast medical symphony. For the team at Mayo Clinic, it was their most complex surgery to date: a face transplant. At the heart of this event was Andy Sandness. He grappled with feelings of isolation and shame after a disfiguring suicide attempt but was determined to reclaim his future, to be seen as ordinary, and to belong again.

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products.

When Vida is born to Mina and husband Freddie, it is love at first sight. She is perfect. But it is also clear from early on that something is not right. This is the story of how Vida came to be diagnosed with rare blood disorder Diamond Blackfan Anaemia, and how Mina and her family’s lives were transformed by the experience of having a child with such a serious condition. Together, they move with fierce tenacity into a future that Mina never expected, but one that is rich with love, hope and community.

In the final stretch of his doctoral internship, Dr. Jonathan Mathias Lassiter had just one more milestone to complete: the diversity project, where candidates insert themselves into a situation in which they'd experience what it’s like to be a minority and then share their experience with the class. Surprisingly, the all-white training committee failed him! They concluded that the program’s first and only Black intern did not understand diversity. Frustrated and panicked, he thought: “These white people are crazy."

Beautifully wrought and staggeringly urgent , Fragile Minds documents Bella Jackson's time as a trainee mental health nurse, and the devastation and hope she encountered in winding corridors and behind locked doors. With compassion and care Bella introduces us to a vivid cast of staff and patients, prompting us to look closer, ask questions and demand more for them.

From the remarkable man whose life inspired the heartstopping film, ‘I Swear’, a book that offers extraordinary insight into what it’s like to live with a severe form of Tourette’s Syndrome: a fascinating, complex condition that’s more common than most of us think (1 in 100 schoolchildren have the condition), and yet is chronically misunderstood.

One fine April day, Mary Ann Kenny’s husband died suddenly while jogging near their family home. In the months that followed, Mary Ann – who had no history of mental illness – began suffering from depression, and then from a terrifying succession of physical and psychological symptoms, including the delusion that her young children had been harmed by her medications.

Renowned scientist Professor Michael Briggs was many things: a Space expert at NASA, an adviser to the World Health Organisation, a successful Big Pharma executive. But Michael Briggs had a secret. A scandal broke out in 1986 when research he conducted was revealed to be compromised. Patients were also claiming that a pregnancy test he pioneered had caused devastating birth defects. Soon after his fall from grace, Briggs was dead, struck down by a mystery illness in a foreign country.

For fifteen years, Joanna Sokol filled private notebooks with her confusion, humor, and anger about the strange world of American street medicine. As her career progressed, she found herself taking notes on scraps of paper, backs of gloves, and margins of EKG printouts. She read about the history that brought ambulances into their current role as the caretakers of society’s forgotten, and spoke to her colleagues about their own experiences and perspectives. Those reflections are collected here, in a series of raw, powerful essays about the state of American medicine.

With The Careful Surgeon, Dr Shehan Hettiaratchy - London's Major Trauma Director - gives us an insight on how to cope with and be our best selves during crisis. Drawing on his experiences leading crisis response teams for some of London's biggest tragedies, as well as his active service with the Parachute Regiment, Dr Hettiaratchy teaches us how to remain positive and look forward beyond the hardest moments that we face.

As a black doctor working on the frontline of the NHS, Matt Hutchinson hears these words all too often. In this book, he offers a compelling glimpse into the unvarnished reality of working in healthcare as an ethnic minority. Tracing his journey from medical school through to working at some of the country's most chaotic hospitals, Matt uncovers how the true backbone of the NHS is the diverse community of immigrant healthcare workers who work tirelessly to keep the show on the road.

We Don't Use Words Like Crazy is a 'professional confessional' from Elliot Sweeney, a mental health nurse who works on the frontline of mental health services. His touching and often humorous memoir lifts the lid on the realities of the profession, in an attempt to highlight the need for compassion for some of the most vulnerable people in the world, and the very committed people that work with them on a professional basis.

In her gorgeously lyrical, passionate and humane first book, Pria Anand shares stories of her own patients alongside her own experiences as a doctor, a mother and a patient, in order to explore all the bizarre ways in which our brains go awry. Moving from the Boston hospital where she treats her patients, to her childhood years in India, to Isla Providencia in the Caribbean and to Guinea in West Africa, she demonstrates again and again the compelling paradox at the heart of neurology.

At age thirty-eight, Jonathan Gluck, a new father with a promising journalism career, was shocked to learn he had multiple myeloma, a rare, incurable blood cancer. He was told he had eighteen months to live. That was more than twenty years ago. Gluck isn’t just something of a medical miracle. He’s also part of a growing population. Thanks to revolutionary medical advances, many cancers and other serious illnesses are no longer death sentences but chronic diseases people can often live with for years.

Throughout history, women's pain and health issues have often been dismissed and viewed simply as an innate part of being female. Whether blamed on a wandering womb, witchcraft or still, to this day, being 'all in our heads' – women's health has been consistently misunderstood. As a result women have, and still are, missing out on receiving the healthcare they deserve. In ‘It’s Probably Nothing’, Naga Munchetty explores the difficulties of being heard, diagnosed and treated.