"The gripping story of a physician who suddenly became a dying patient, and a riveting exploration into the worlds of personal loss and faltering medical care. Dr. Rana Awdish never imagined that an emergency trip to the hospital would result in hemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn child. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and multiple overlapping organ failures. At each step of the way, Awdish faced something even more unexpected: her fellow doctors' inability to truly see or acknowledge the pain of loss and human suffering. This exacting emotional distance was completely at odds with the vision of medicine she had aspired to. Yet, heartbreakingly, she recognized herself in every failure--the product of a culture that had normalized clinical distance and hardwired self-protective barriers into medical training. As she finds herself on the other side of the same partitions she was trained to construct, Awdish artfully illuminates the dysfunction of disconnection for everyone involved. It is through her unflinching examination of the fatal flaws in a well-intentioned but often-misguided standard of care that Awdish achieves a crystalline vision of a different and better possibility for us all. Shatteringly personal yet wholly universal, In Shock offers a brave road map for anyone navigating illness and presents physicians with a new paradigm and rationale for cultivating emotional bonds with their patients."--Jacket.
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