The Lonely Patient: How we Experience Illness

This is a secular book, but an excellent walk through illness "from an emotional perspective." According to Stein, a professor at the Brown University School of Medicine and a novelist (The Lynching Tree), such patients pass through four emotional stages: betrayal, terror, loneliness and loss, which he illustrates with riveting case studies.

One patient had a mysterious bump on his head; because of his fear of anesthesia, he decided to forgo a necessary operation. Stein's most expressive prose evokes the isolated world of the patient, who is locked into a limited existence, confined in a hospital room or at home, exemplified at its most extreme by a quadriplegic who feels completely shut in to a strange indoor island world."

Stein says he now understands the importance of taking the hand of a fearful patient, who need not display courage in front of physicians. This is a moving and eloquent testimony from a caring practitioner. (Feb.)

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Despite years of medical training and practice, only when his beloved brother-in-law, Richard, was diagnosed with a rare cancer did internist Stein contemplate the psychological effects of illness. Sadly, he felt his medical training had inadequately prepared him to properly counsel the terminally ill man. During the next eight years, as Richard fought a losing battle, Stein witnessed his responses to his new life circumstances.

Throughout Richard's illness and for the six years thereafter, Stein took particular note of how his patients dealt with chronic and terminal illnesses and how caretakers and loved ones were affected. He likens life with chronic or terminal illness to living in a strange, new place in which one experiences in turn many emotions, the most common being betrayal, terror, loss, and loneliness.

He candidly shares Richard's story and those of a handful of others as he presents first-rate analysis of the emotional toll illness takes on all affected by it.

A valuable resource, complete with tips on navigating the shadowy terrain of chronic illness.

Author: Michael Stein MD, William Morrow; 240 pages, hardcover