The website Shepherd.com offers readers a new way to discover books that may interest them. Each page describes one book by a contributing author, and five others on a related theme. I was invited to create a page on a theme of my choice, and having just published a memoir about my own migraine, I decided to look for books written by other doctors who had been patients themselves. I was less interested in the medical details than in the way the illness experience had shaped their personal and professional lives. I came up with a varied list of recommendations.
Doctors can face particular challenges when they become patients. The change of status may seem humiliating, as poignantly described in the saddest book on my list, by an eminent surgeon who felt himself reduced to “Just another old man with prostate cancer”. On the positive side, doctors who are still working may well become better clinicians especially as regards communication with patients and relatives. This comes through in a collection of vignettes about the everyday clinical work of a doctor with a long history of ulcerative colitis. A memoir by a medical student who was rendered quadriplegic in a car accident, but went on to qualify and build a successful career, is an inspiring read showing what determination can achieve. My two most unusual book choices are by doctors whose illness experience proved a catalyst for a move away from orthodox medicine towards alternative fields with a spiritual focus.
To see details of my list please click on the image below, or visit this page.
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Jennifer Barraclough 
I am getting ready to publish a memoir of my life, working on the title, in which I had to become an integrative physician to heal myself. The first chapter is titled Poisoned before my First Breath, because my mom was mercury toxic and detoxed the mercury into me, her first full term birth. The placenta does not “protect” the infant. This caused numerous illnesses that doctors could not treat. For example, I had fairly severe depression due to the mercury. I did not have a Prozac deficiency and Prozac did not work. It also knocked out my thyroid, adrenals and ovaries. I share information that should be out there for women, but I do not see it. My book is a series of semi-focused stories as I grow up end eventually become an integrative doctor and diagnose and treat myself for my mercury toxicity…then I was able to lose weight. Then I was able to divorce my abusive husband. Then I was able to recognize and treat many problems. Since this book is in process, but will be published in the next 2 months…would you like to read a chapter or two and then endorse it? Sell it?
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Thank you for writing to me. I’d be happy to read one or two chapters of your forthcoming book, but I can’t promise to be any help as regards selling!
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