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Formats
Ebook Details
  • 09/2014
  • 978-0-9908-4332-0 B00NRX4WRE
  • 348 pages
  • $4.99
Paperback Book Details
  • 10/2014
  • 9780990843344 B00NRX4WRE
  • 348 pages
  • $16.95
Hardcover Book Details
  • 01/2016
  • 9780996892001 B00NRX4WRE
  • 342 pages
  • $29.95
Temple Emmet Williams
Author, Illustrator, Service Provider
Warrior Patient: How to Beat Deadly Diseases with Laughter, Good Doctors, Love, and Guts.
This book is the surprisingly funny story of someone who recovers completely from a relentless series of medical problems, many resulting from the system designed to prevent them. They include cancer, kidney failure, dialysis, deadly infections, partial blindness, shingles, large open wounds, a hernia and a little amputation. It takes almost three years to accomplish, but the patient now plays tennis, walks, bikes and works out in a gym. Almost miraculously, he recaptures “ normal.” Learn how he does it in this memoir of survival. It will change the way you deal with the miracles of modern medicine.

Semi Finalist

Plot/Idea: 10 out of 10
Originality: 10 out of 10
Prose: 10 out of 10
Character/Execution: 10 out of 10
Overall: 10.00 out of 10

Assessment:

Plot: The author is indeed a warrior; he also knows how to tell a story. This is a page-turner.

Prose: Well written and a pleasure to read.

Originality: There are many recovery books out there. This one just seems to go a little deeper. If readers are initially turned off by the second person, by the end of the book, they will appreciate the author's choice in using it.

Character Development: Character plus conflict equals change. Through the author's skillful (sometimes painful) descriptions of the conflict, the reader is able to experience change and even a degree of resolution.

Blurb: Only an author with such an impressive history and talent could create this inspiring story that will act as a guide for others on similar paths.

Date Submitted: March 27, 2017

Reviews
Kirkus Reviews

In his humorous debut memoir, Williams envisions his shambolic prostate cancer saga as the education of a “medical dope” into “healthy hope.”

A Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist and editor based in Boca Raton, Florida, Williams embarked on an unwelcome medical odyssey after a biopsy revealed he had prostate cancer. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of a three-year comedy of errors.

The radical robotic prostatectomy went well, but it was followed by hernias, MRSA, kidney failure, shingles, and eye troubles. Doctors failed him with a “prescription fiasco” and a canceled surgery. This might all have made for an overwhelmingly depressing litany of suffering were it not for Williams’ winning second-person, present-tense narration.

By recounting his journey like a set of instructions to a hapless new patient, he involves readers on an intimate level and gains wry perspective on his own circumstances. Along the way, he gives readable accounts of bodily processes and treatment history, such as a description of early dialysis.

In one memorable chapter, he also recalls four previous occasions when he faced down death: pneumonia at age 4, two reckless teenage car accidents, and incarceration in a Malawi prison.

“Humor is the best doctor you will ever know,” Williams insists, and he follows his own advice by finding the funny side of every situation. That doctor who caused a prescription snafu—which gave Williams blisters all over his groin and legs—attended “the 10,623rd best medical school in the world.”

Even catheterization and erectile dysfunction offer a few laughs, the latter entailing a special class and a penis pump.

Clip art and stock photos ... add color and whimsy. Yet Williams stresses that patients must demand answers and hold their physicians to account.

There are serious warnings here, too, often delivered in short “Warrior Patient rule” aphorisms at the end of each chapter. For instance, “If you need help, get it. Bravery is for dead people.”

Equally sardonic and informative—definitely not your average cancer memoir. — Kirkus Reviews

Formats
Ebook Details
  • 09/2014
  • 978-0-9908-4332-0 B00NRX4WRE
  • 348 pages
  • $4.99
Paperback Book Details
  • 10/2014
  • 9780990843344 B00NRX4WRE
  • 348 pages
  • $16.95
Hardcover Book Details
  • 01/2016
  • 9780996892001 B00NRX4WRE
  • 342 pages
  • $29.95
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