Incidental Findings

Tales of healing, medicine, and the human heart by an award-winning writerIn Singular Intimacies, which the New England Journal of Medicine said captured the'essence of becoming and being a doctor,' Danielle Ofri led us into the hectic, constantly challenging world of big-city medicine. In Incidental Findings, she's finished her training and is learning through practice to become a more rounded healer. The book opens with a dramatic tale of the tables being turned on Dr. Ofri: She's had to shed the precious white coat and credentials she worked so hard to earn and enter her own hospital as a patient. She experiences the real'slight prick and pressure' of a long needle as well as the very real sense of invasion and panic that routinely visits her patients.These fifteen intertwined tales include 'Living Will,' where Dr. Ofri treats a man who has lost the will to live, and she too comes dangerously close to concluding that he has nothing to live for;'Common Ground,' in which a patient's difficult decision to have an abortion highlights the vulnerabilities of doctor and patient alike;'Acne,' where she is confronted by a patient whose physical and emotional abuse she can't possibly heal, so she must settle on treating the one thing she can, the least of her patient's problems; and finally a stunning concluding chapter,'Tools of the Trade,' where Dr. Ofri's touch is the last in a woman's long life."Ofri's thoughtful and honest second book-the title is inspired by her realization, during her own amniocentesis, that conditions that seem minor to doctors are monumental when they happen to you-is equal parts The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Kitchen Confidential."-Nicholas Confessore, New York Times Book Review

Dr. Danielle Ofri, author of Singular Intimacies (Beacon / 7252-4 / $24.00 hc), is an attending physician at Bellevue and the cofounder and editor-in-chief of the Bellevue Literary Review. She is currently a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times and the New England Journal of Medicine.