Resumo de Aftershock - Jesse Gruman

?Nobody gets out of here alive,? say the sages.Most Americans bury this advice in their souls? dark recesses?until that moment when some doctor drops a dread diagnostic bomb. Then, we learn that not getting out of here alive means us?not some anonymous ?nobody.? We sit there, stunned. The doctor drones on but we can?t hear. Questions hammer our brains. What to do? Where to go? What about another opinion? How to tell husbands, wives, lovers, children?How long do we have? Will we suffer? Suffer much?Who will take care of us? Is it worth thefight? AfterShock: What to Do When the Doctor Gives You?or Someone You Love?a Devastating Diagnosis, Jessie Gruman?s must-read guide ?for reluctant consumers,? provides a road mapwhen we know our bodies have betrayed us. AfterShock is a New Best Friend for figuring outhow to put one foot before the other, taking crucial steps after
disease terrorists strike. Once our passports to the World of the Well are revoked, Gruman leads us through the wilderness. Outlining every day reactions, choices, decisions, obstructions, she tracks roads for recognizing symptoms, knowing necessary tests, understanding results, partnering with physicians on treatments. She walks us through the craps table of risk-benefit ratios on cures, remissions, and side-effects. Tips, little and big, fill AfterShock?s pages: how to find doctors and check their qualifications (no, they?re not all equally competent or communicative); how to get beyond specialists? Praetorian guards, those secretaries who stall appointments for three months; how to cope with doctors, hospitals, staffs, and institutional rigidity. Most of all, how to learn what?s essential, learn it fast, assess its accuracy, and use it most effectively.Whether we?re getting Social Security or fresh out of school, a ?devastating diagnosis? turns us into forlorn wanderers seeking answers. Knowing that a disease we never heard of?or one we always feared?is eating us creates Internet-hunters for information. But seeking isn?t always finding. Sometimes, a bad case of information-overload results. Randomly Googling diagnoses may keep us from seeing the forest from the trees. We need Gruman for our guide.Doing small day-to-day chores are a tall order. AfterShock?s rich how-to appendices provide expertise in navigating the patient trail, finding evidence-based treatments, defending privacy, or planning estates. It?s all there: from baby-sitters to health insurance and updating a will to supplementing what insurance doesn?t cover (a tough assignment). Finding the best doctor may be the tallest order of all. Second opinions from experts are a must, says Gruman, answering crucial ?how-to?s.? How to find and define an expert (not just someone 50 miles from home). Getting an appointment?soon. Questions for the original physician? Questions for the second opinion. Getting doctors to sit down and translate Medspeak and probability words. Not settling for fast answers while the doctor?s hand is on the doorknob. Preparing every question beforehand and writing the answer. A pencil and paper are a patient?s best friends. Remember, warns Gruman, ?You are not your disease.? Every step leads to other crossroads and more decisions. If possible, continue working. Do the math. Even though disease makes demands, working fights the attackers, distracts us--and pays those bills.Despite all the waiting in doctors? offices, tests, x-rays, clinical trials, pain and weakness, illness should be secondary. Returning to our pre-illness life is the goal. Battling the discouraging awareness of lost control is crucial. Not giving up is key.Interestingly, Gruman asserts, ?Not everyone who receives a serious diagnosis needs this book.? But everyone does. Even the healthiest of us will someday face patient-hood in that lonely, alien land of sickness where we don?t understand the language (who among us knows Medspeak?), and don?t know where to turn. Everyone, before and after the disease demons strike, needs this handbook for dealing with medical disaster. Gruman?s guide to the other side of the bedside should be required reading for physicians, medical students, and other healthcare practitioners.Gruman brings a unique perspective to her interviews with disaster-survivors and physicians. A pioneering psycho-sociologist and founder of Washington?s MacArthur-sponsored Center for the Advancement of Health, she is a consumer advocate for everyone forced to become a patient. Gruman knows catastrophic illness on her flesh. Three cancers and a cardiac crisis have besieged her. Veteran of countless Intensive Care Units, surgical ?suites,? and oncologists? waiting rooms, Gruman coped with and defeated all of her medical disasters. Yet every time she received a ?devastating diagnosis,? her expert credentials went up in smoke. The earth shook beneath her feet. Stunned by ?how much energy it takes to get from the bad news to actually starting on the return path to health,? she acted just like all her interviewees. decisions and indecisions beset her.?There is so much uncertainty about what?s wrong, so many options for what to do;no one else seems to be taking charge; and I need to understand what's going on. The decisions I must make will affectthe rest of my life.? How to live the rest of our lives after bad news strikes is AfterShock?s sub-text. A support group between covers, it helps ?manage? the devilish details of catastrophic illness. However tough it may be, advises Gruman, we must pick ourselves up, brush ourselves off, and get going. For time is short. AfterShock provides a way to ?get out of here alive? if or when bad news strikes.

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