Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years [Kindle Edition]
Author: Michael J. Collins | Language: English | ISBN: B003J48CAE | Format: PDF, EPUB
Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years
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When Michael Collins decides to become a surgeon, he is totally unprepared for the chaotic life of a resident at a major hospital. A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.
This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.
Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.
Unflinching and deeply engaging, Hot Lights, Cold Steel is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.
This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.
Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.
Unflinching and deeply engaging, Hot Lights, Cold Steel is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.
Direct download links available for Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years
- File Size: 466 KB
- Print Length: 320 pages
- Publisher: St. Martin's Press; Reprint edition (April 1, 2010)
- Sold by: Macmillan
- Language: English
- ASIN: B003J48CAE
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #115,203 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #29 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Medical eBooks > Specialties > Surgery
This is a well-written and highly polished memoir about an Orthopaedic surgeon's four year residency at the famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Dr. Collins is a good writer, giving the impression that he poured his heart and soul into this text: it's funny, at times sad and gruesome in parts, but again, reading about the training surgeon, one gets the distinct feeling that these men and women, having to run through the depths of hell to finally get qualified, must be born to the task - or simply masochistic by nature.
If this memoir is to be believed, and there's no reason why it shouldn't, every nightmare story that you have heard about the four-year residency is absolutely true. It's astounding that these people manage to survive - the tortuous long stretches on their feet saving lives, sometimes reaching 60 to 70 hours is nothing less than miraculous. Treating patients day and night, constantly worrying that you'll screw up, taking peoples lives in your hands could send the most grounded individual around the bend - in some cases it does, but for the most part, these people get through to become qualified surgeons, as did Dr. Collins, but through a lot of blood sweat and tears.
Hot Lights, Cold Steel reads like a novel, as the characterization, structure of the plot and the pathos, the utter sadness of some of his cases, and the joy and exhilaration of his successes, had me just as enthralled as any top selling thriller. Dr. Collins has a gift for description as he illustrates the amputation of a limb, including a section of the patient's pelvis, in such detailed imagery, that it became difficult to read. He also has a great sense of humour, which I believe is so necessary to survive in this profession.
One of the more terrible of the Dr.
"Hot Lights, Cold Steel," by Michael J. Collins, is a fascinating account of the making of an orthopedic surgeon. Collins starts his residency at Rochester's prestigious Mayo Clinic with deep feelings of insecurity. In fact, he dispiritedly dubs himself "the dullest scalpel in the drawer." Unlike his fellow residents, Collins, an Irish Catholic from Chicago's West Side, did not do multiple rotations in orthopedics while in medical school, conducted no research, and wrote no scientific papers. Instead, he worked on a loading dock to make ends meet. To his credit, however, Collins has energy, intelligence, ambition, and perseverance.
At first, Collins tries to stay in the background and keep his mouth shut, hoping that his superiors will overlook his obvious ignorance. When he reviews a chart with the notation "Patient is TTWB," he wonders what this acronym means. Could it be "three times without bleeding," or "terribly thirsty without beer?" Collins disconsolately predicts that he will shortly be drummed out of the residency program for "practicing medicine without a brain." The author's self-deprecating humor is delightful and it helps to offset the tragic cases he recounts.
Collins explores the grueling nature of a surgeon's training: the sleepless nights, snatched meals, long absences from loved ones, and fear of hurting a patient. Because he is constantly short of money, he and his wife, Patti, drive a series of broken down junkers, and as his family grows, he must moonlight in order to pay the bills. The compensations are the exhilaration of helping a patient regain his or her health, the excitement of performing an operation for the first time, and the deep friendships that Collins forms with his fellow orthopods.
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