ADVERTISEMENT
240 Beats per Minute: Life with an Unruly Heart
Roger Mills, author
In February 1999, Professor Bernard Witholt, a 58-year-old award-winning Dutch scientist, developed an unpredictable and potentially fatal heart rhythm disorder called ventricular tachycardia. Over the next decade, he documented every detail of his diagnosis and treatment, including his decision to have a defibrillator implanted (ICD.) After his death in 2015, his wife shared his writings with his Amherst College rowing teammate and friend, noted cardiologist Dr. Roger Mills. In 240 Beats per Minute: Life with an Unruly Heart, Dr. Mills tells Bernard’s story, written as a conversational memoir. Together, they offer extensive insight on what it is like to live with a potentially fatal condition and what patients can and should do to effectively advocate for themselves.
\t240 Beats per Minute demonstrates, through Bernard’s interactions with his physicians, how patients and health care professionals can communicate honestly and effectively
Reviews
As biologist Witholt began his 15-year struggle with recurrent ventricular tachycardia in 1999, he began recording his experience in scientific terms; this book represents that record, combined with thoughtful italicized commentary from his lifelong friend, physician Mills (Nesiritide: The Rise and Fall of Scios). Witholt first knew something was wrong when his pulse rate shot up to 240 beats per minute. He initially resisted the common treatment, an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD, which has the unpleasant effect of delivering “a shock... directly inside your heart,” but eventually acquiesced in early 2000. Happily, as Witholt became accustomed to the ICD, he was able to return to his beloved pursuit of rowing. Mills, also a rower, affectionately echoes and emphasizes his friend’s paeans to the sport: “Bernie’s almost lyric description of his Saturday mornings went far beyond science; he loved life.” However, Mills also shares frustrations with how reluctant his friend could be to seek necessary medical care, recalling, “I was his friend, not his physician.... I find it an impossible situation.” Culminating in Witholt’s death due to pancreatic cancer in 2015, this book serves as an endearing elegy from a devoted friend and, fittingly, includes three of Witholt’s essays, intended to illustrate his devotion and love for teaching. (BookLife)
