Rating: 
Summary: How to be a BAD patient or, Surviving the Cure!
Review: Recommended to me by an adult-diagnosis diabetic who said it taught him how to be a bad patient and get good treatment. Now, as a breast cancer survivor, I can only agree. Doctors, nurses, and technicians are professionals. Does that make you, the patient, an amatuer? And whose life is it anyway? E.H. has the answer.
Rating:
Summary: Evan Handler names names -- as well he should.
Review: This is an honest, no-holds-barred account of the treatment and mistreatment Evan Handler experienced as he fought to save his life in a battle with cancer. I have worked in hospitals for 20 years, and I am recommending this book to my colleagues. Evan Handler describes vividly the rage and anxiety and hope and fear and triumph that he felt as he encountered family, friends, and healthcare professionals in the course of his illness and treatments. He is or was a very self-centered young man. Perhaps that's what it took to survive. Whatever, it makes for a compelling first-hand account, and one that we can all learn from.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful
Review: This is an incredible book written by a courageous, amazing man
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Summary: "Dante's Inferno" meets "Friends"
Review: Though I read his book a few years' ago, I still remember insights of Evan Handler. His recounting of his experiences with current therapies -- traditional and non-traditional -- and health care providers are memorable. Whenever I think of the word "hope" I remember this: "I've heard the phrase -- "false hope" -- used by doctors and nurses again and again, in very self-congratulatory ways, as if, by exterminating it, they were providing a great philanthropic service to the community...I will state, unequivocally, that there is no such thing as false hope. It's an oxymoron. It can't exist. Hope has no connotations of certainty. Hope carries no assurance of success. Hope is the one thing in the world that can never, ever, be false. Hope is just what it says. A longing. A desire. Is there such a thing as a false, aching desire? I think, too often, that some doctors are protecting themselves from the aching desires, the hope, of their patients. It must be very painful to fail to save the life of someone who never concealed his passion to survive. His hope. Much more painful than the death of a patent willing to hide the intensity of his wish. If only they could learn what a potent source of energy they're wasting." His comments about receiving needles are especially pertinent because hospitals, with their cost-cutting, have been training greater numbers of employees how to draw blood. Hospital administrators should read Handler's account of the artistry of a good phlebotomist and the torture inflicted by a poor phlebotomist. I found his book to be a genuine and realistic account of his experiences and a gift to his readers. He is an excellent writer. I wait and hope for many more articles and books from this author.
Rating:
Summary: Warm and Wonderful
Review: Though I read his book a few years' ago, I still remember insights of Evan Handler. His recounting of his experiences with current therapies -- traditional and non-traditional -- and health care providers are memorable. Whenever I think of the word "hope" I remember this: "I've heard the phrase -- "false hope" -- used by doctors and nurses again and again, in very self-congratulatory ways, as if, by exterminating it, they were providing a great philanthropic service to the community...I will state, unequivocally, that there is no such thing as false hope. It's an oxymoron. It can't exist. Hope has no connotations of certainty. Hope carries no assurance of success. Hope is the one thing in the world that can never, ever, be false. Hope is just what it says. A longing. A desire. Is there such a thing as a false, aching desire? I think, too often, that some doctors are protecting themselves from the aching desires, the hope, of their patients. It must be very painful to fail to save the life of someone who never concealed his passion to survive. His hope. Much more painful than the death of a patent willing to hide the intensity of his wish. If only they could learn what a potent source of energy they're wasting." His comments about receiving needles are especially pertinent because hospitals, with their cost-cutting, have been training greater numbers of employees how to draw blood. Hospital administrators should read Handler's account of the artistry of a good phlebotomist and the torture inflicted by a poor phlebotomist. I found his book to be a genuine and realistic account of his experiences and a gift to his readers. He is an excellent writer. I wait and hope for many more articles and books from this author.
Rating: 
Summary: LEARNING THE OBJECT OF THE GAME OF LIFE, SORT OF...
Review: TIME ON FIRE tells the story of how I beat an "incurable" illness, often by beating the healthcare system that tried to beat me up. I've tried to fill the book with all the horror and abundant humor I found in the arena of struggling to survive. The absurdities and swirling, circus-like madness of hospitals where expedience and cooperation seemed to be encouraged over individual excellence. In essence, where mediocrity was accepted - even though nothing short of an extraordinary performance on everyone's part would have insured a rapid decline. The book tells an unusual love story; tales of sex in hospital bathrooms and guilt ridden fantasies over beautiful psychic healers. It tells of a young man who, when his life is threatened, is willing to confront his girlfriend, his family, his doctors, and himself in his all out effort to win back the existence he has barely begun. And THEN, the real challenges begin! How to remain curiously engaged in the everyday mundanities of life after the intensity of years in the trenches on the front lines of the cutting edge of extinction? An existential dillemma, to be sure. The book has been endorsed and favorably reviewed by Amy Tan, Neil Simon, Spalding Gray, C. Everett Koop, The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, Tony Kushner, Larry Kramer, San Francisco Review of Books, and many others.
Rating:
Summary: Insightful, Adventurous, Bitterly Funny & ENTERTAINING
Review: Two years ago, when searching for health books for my sick father, I stumbled across this book. Before handing it over to him, I decided to read it. What a magnificent book! You need not be sick to be swiftly taken in by Handler's keen, sarcastic, loving and honest observations & emotions, as he leaves no stone unturned (or ridiculous practice uncovered) in his fight for life. Interwoven with horrific or blissful medical environments, he keeps us vividly informed of his physical and emotional state (both strong and weak) and lets us in on his family, spiritual, sexual and professional life. I cried, but laughed even more, the terrors fused with an uncanny irony, but mostly I fell in love with this amazing young man's vitality. You'll wish you could know him or have his perspective.
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Summary: Story of young NY actor with leukemia makes my top 10 list!
Review: Two years ago, when searching for health books for my sick father, I stumbled across this book. Before handing it over to him, I decided to read it. What a magnificent book! You need not be sick to be swiftly taken in by Handler's keen, sarcastic, loving and honest observations & emotions, as he leaves no stone unturned (or ridiculous practice uncovered) in his fight for life. Interwoven with horrific or blissful medical environments, he keeps us vividly informed of his physical and emotional state (both strong and weak) and lets us in on his family, spiritual, sexual and professional life. I cried, but laughed even more, the terrors fused with an uncanny irony, but mostly I fell in love with this amazing young man's vitality. You'll wish you could know him or have his perspective.
Rating: 
Summary: Time to Burn
Review: You had better have a lot of time to burn to make it through Time on Fire. It might have made an interesting short story or magazine article. Instead, it is a meandering tale written with the sort of cliche and analogy only a high school english teacher could appreciate. I bought the book hoping to find it to be an appropriate gift for a terminally ill friend. His time is too precious to spend pouring through the trite tantrums of an overprivileged survivor.
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