She laments the training of young nurses who embrace high technology but who are also taught that the act of caring and remaining at the bedside is somehow beneath them. Shalof tells us a lot about nursing as we go and she holds nurses as accountable for patient safety as doctors, a welcome commentary in a genre that often doctor-bashes. Just let go and be a slab of meat ,” that she settles down. It is when her friend Janet tells her, “You don’t have to be mother, nurse, or friend. Her stoical husband and an encounter with a mindfulness teacher do little to allay her fears. Aided (or hampered) by Google searches, she compiles a list of potential surgical and post-operative mishaps, which reads like poetry, but also deepens the book’s suspense and our concern for her as we read on. Shalof knows she will require surgery but, having worked in intensive care for many years, also knows everything that can go wrong.

More than a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I’m insatiably curious about the multitude of challenges that people face and the infinite ways they respond to them.”Īt a certain point, she cannot ignore her own illness story: she becomes increasingly fatigued and short of breath and exhibits “Schaufenster schauen,” where a patient with cardiac disease pretends to be enthralled with the scenery, but is really catching her breath. I never tire of being let into my patients’ lives. “I’ll admit it,” she writes, “I’m an adrenalin junkie, getting high on the drama and action and grappling with the various complicated ethical dilemmas, but my real fix is stories.

Shalof is a born storyteller and weaves in threads of moving encounters with patients as she explains in Opening My Heart: A Journey from Nurse to Patient and Back Again how her own leaky valve catches up with her. She marries, has two children and loves her work.

Tilda Shalof, author of A Nurse’s Story: Life, Death and In-Between in an Intensive Care Unit, learns by accident at a very young age that she has a defective aortic valve and could “drop dead at any time.” With the experience of caring for a depressive mother and ill father and with a healthy dose of denial, she becomes a highly specialized ICU nurse. One story goes well and the other does not. What is it like when someone who works in health care becomes a patient? Two new books, one written by an intensive care nurse, the other by a health policy analyst and patient advocate, provide personal narratives of going under the knife.

A Nurse's Story by Tilda Shalof