Twelve Patients: Life and Death at Bellevue Hospital

About this book

In the spirit of Oliver Sacks and the inspiration for the NBC drama New Amsterdam this intensely involving memoir from a Medical Director of Bellevue Hospital looks poignantly at patients lives and highlights the complex mind-body connection. Using the plights of twelve very different patients--from dignitaries at the nearby UN to supermax prisoners at Rikers Island to illegal immigrants and Wall Street tycoons--Dr. Eric Manheimer "offers far more than remarkable medical dramas: he blends each patients personal experiences with their social implications" (Publishers Weekly). Manheimer is not only the medical director of the countrys oldest public hospital but he is also a patient. As the book unfolds the narrator is diagnosed with cancer and he is forced to wrestle with the end of his own life even as he struggles to save the lives of others.