Description:
Is there an afterlife? Janice Hudson, who's seen her share of death, ventures an assuring yes in this memoir about her years as a trauma nurse. In May 1987, newlywed intensive-care nurse Hudson was recruited to join a helicopter ambulance service and "fly out to accidents, scrape up the patients and try to get them to qualified care in that first 'golden hour,' when they'd have the best chance for meaningful survival after traumatic injuries." The possibilities for traumatic injury are, of course, legion. Hudson hits on the usual suspects: barroom brawls, failed suicide attempts, and grisly car wrecks. She also recounts what are likely to be some of the more unusual cases in the annals of emergency medicine, including a call from a woman who insisted that her mountaintop home was being overrun by an army of mountain lions (which turned out to be a single housecat, amplified thanks to the caller's diet of alcohol and crystal meth). Death is a constant in her pages (and death itself isn't so bad, she observes: "It's the circumstances that are tragic"). But so is Hudson's belief that something interesting awaits us afterward, as a few of her eerie anecdotes attest. Doctors' and medical researchers' memoirs are many; those of nurses are comparatively few. Well written and thoughtful, Hudson's is a welcome addition to that small literature--though it's definitely not for the squeamish. --Gregory McNamee
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