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Rating: 
Summary: Antidote to Touched By an Angel: a doctor's lessons on death
Review: It might be a cliché that knowledge of death leads to knowledge of life, but so long as we can learn from death, the cliché bears repeating, as Dr. Jerome Groopman's book eloquently demonstrates. The Measure of Our Days narrates the dying and near-death experiences of eight AIDS and cancer victims, all patients at Groopman's Boston clinic. Groopman dedicated himself to terminal patients in 1974, when his father died before his time, at the hands of an overwhelmed general practitioner. He vowed then to help patients fight for life to the end, as his father was not helped. He dedicates his book to the lessons that his terminal patients have taught him. Groopman's Jewish spirituality infuses each chapter, though the doctor presents his skeptical faith in a graceful, non-preachy way that Gentiles, Jews, and atheists alike will find engaging. Some chapters end with hope, but none with the sense that death can be vanquished. The book is a sort of Jewish-scientific anti-dote to Touched by an Angel and other sentimental treatments of death -- it is less hopeful, but more convincing. The cumulative force of the stories is very moving, and so is each story individually. A venture capitalist recovers from kidney cancer, only to realize that his life has been hollow and he has been a "short-term investor" all along. A Catholic boy recovers from leukemia, then develops AIDS from a blood transfusion and has to challenge his father and the family priest not to read religion into his condition. A single woman with HIV fights with Groopman over her ardent desire to adopt a child. A writer who feels that he has never produced a great work abandons his dreams and chooses a new path toward fulfillment after a grueling battle with bone marrow cancer. Each chapter presents vivid side characters, including the diseases themselves. In accessible prose, Groopman describes the science of T-cells and chemotherapy, blood transfusions and HIV, building concise portraits of breast cancer, AIDS, and other ravages of modern death. Groopman is a memorable character too, fighting for his patients, agonizing over their complications. He accepts the criticism that doctors are often too detached. At the same time he takes us behind the doctor's mask, revealing the emotional torments of working with terminal patients. Sometimes clinical detachment is the only way a doctor can make it through the day. Sometimes it is also the most effective way to save someone's life. The book benefits from Groopman's fine writing. He has a clinician's eye for detail, good storytelling instincts, and a surprising ability with dialogue. The chapters unfold vividly, with unexpected twists and several dramatic climaxes. The near-death of a close friend reminds Groopman of the Torah's great truth, that our days on earth are numbered and all human accomplishments will vanish in the end. Groopman's book is one human accomplishment worth savoring and learning from until that time.
Rating:
Summary: Antidote to Touched By an Angel: a doctor's lessons on death
Review: It might be a cliché that knowledge of death leads to knowledge of life, but so long as we can learn from death, the cliché bears repeating, as Dr. Jerome Groopman's book eloquently demonstrates. The Measure of Our Days narrates the dying and near-death experiences of eight AIDS and cancer victims, all patients at Groopman's Boston clinic. Groopman dedicated himself to terminal patients in 1974, when his father died before his time, at the hands of an overwhelmed general practitioner. He vowed then to help patients fight for life to the end, as his father was not helped. He dedicates his book to the lessons that his terminal patients have taught him. Groopman's Jewish spirituality infuses each chapter, though the doctor presents his skeptical faith in a graceful, non-preachy way that Gentiles, Jews, and atheists alike will find engaging. Some chapters end with hope, but none with the sense that death can be vanquished. The book is a sort of Jewish-scientific anti-dote to Touched by an Angel and other sentimental treatments of death -- it is less hopeful, but more convincing. The cumulative force of the stories is very moving, and so is each story individually. A venture capitalist recovers from kidney cancer, only to realize that his life has been hollow and he has been a "short-term investor" all along. A Catholic boy recovers from leukemia, then develops AIDS from a blood transfusion and has to challenge his father and the family priest not to read religion into his condition. A single woman with HIV fights with Groopman over her ardent desire to adopt a child. A writer who feels that he has never produced a great work abandons his dreams and chooses a new path toward fulfillment after a grueling battle with bone marrow cancer. Each chapter presents vivid side characters, including the diseases themselves. In accessible prose, Groopman describes the science of T-cells and chemotherapy, blood transfusions and HIV, building concise portraits of breast cancer, AIDS, and other ravages of modern death. Groopman is a memorable character too, fighting for his patients, agonizing over their complications. He accepts the criticism that doctors are often too detached. At the same time he takes us behind the doctor's mask, revealing the emotional torments of working with terminal patients. Sometimes clinical detachment is the only way a doctor can make it through the day. Sometimes it is also the most effective way to save someone's life. The book benefits from Groopman's fine writing. He has a clinician's eye for detail, good storytelling instincts, and a surprising ability with dialogue. The chapters unfold vividly, with unexpected twists and several dramatic climaxes. The near-death of a close friend reminds Groopman of the Torah's great truth, that our days on earth are numbered and all human accomplishments will vanish in the end. Groopman's book is one human accomplishment worth savoring and learning from until that time.
Rating: 
Summary: A doctor's psalm.
Review: All great literature teaches that death is the mother of beauty, that human eloquence begins with the understanding of mortality. How better to know ourselves, the limits of our endurance, and the greatness of our spirit than at the brink?
Jerome Groopman, a cancer and AIDS specialist, tends to dying or seriously ill people every day. His book (the title is from Psalm 39) takes readers into the lives and (sometimes) deaths of eight patients. With each of them, Groopman is both healer and confessor. But in the telling of their stories, he is more: he renders the poetry inherent in their lives and in so doing creates a psalm of the highest order--praising man not only for his strength, but for his ability to see his own weakness and bear it. The transcendent nature of our mortal experience is the ultimate subject of this book. No two stories are alike; each of the eight men or women (one is a child) carries the weight of illness and death differently, and we learn--through Groopman's telling--that despite the differences they are bound together in one essential way: they see the meaning of their lives with stark, beautiful clarity. This is a clarity most of us rarely experience, and one that Groopmen has been fortunate enough to see and capture for us in these gripping pages. That he is richer and greater for having allowed himself to be touched by these patients is surely evident, as is the rare gift he has given us in writing about them. "Who is wealthy?" quotes one patient from the Talmud. "He who rejoices in his portion," answers the Rabbi. Readers of this collection of startling, often horrendous tales of suffering and self-knowledge, will also learn about rejoicing.
Rating:
Summary: Passionate physician's view of death through his patients.
Review: This is a phenomenal work! To those of the pastoral/theological bent, this is must reading. However, anyone would be fascinated with this topic, as it is universal. Groopman depicts life/death in a passionate, attached way that we all desire in our physician. This subject encompasses all of life, as the wisest human wrote in his diary: "A good name is better than a good oinment. And the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. It is better to go to ahouse of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart." Ecclesiastes 7:1,2. Groopman helps us take this to heart in this excellent read.
Rating:
Summary: Passionate physician's view of death through his patients.
Review: This is a phenomenal work! To those of the pastoral/theological bent, this is must reading. However, anyone would be fascinated with this topic, as it is universal. Groopman depicts life/death in a passionate, attached way that we all desire in our physician. This subject encompasses all of life, as the wisest human wrote in his diary: "A good name is better than a good oinment. And the day of one's death is better than the day of one's birth. It is better to go to ahouse of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, because that is the end of every man, and the living takes it to heart." Ecclesiastes 7:1,2. Groopman helps us take this to heart in this excellent read.
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