In this dynamic essay collection and winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, Gleason straddles the boundaries between being a clinical worker as well as a patient as he examines the interactions between modern health care and the biological vulnerabilities of the human body. For children, as evidenced in the opening piece \u201cInheritance,\u201d illness and, more gravely, death carries speculation and a demand for explanations as in the case of the author\u2019s family, where several of his young cousins died of a genetic brain disorder. Conveyed through a series of letters, \u201cBlood in the Water\u201d finds the author sympathizing with Ga\u00ebtan Dugas, the French Canadian flight attendant mislabeled as \u201cPatient Zero\u201d at the onset of the AIDS epidemic as Gleason grapples with his own paranoia after an inconclusive HIV test. While each of these essays view the seriousness of human illness through the author\u2019s perspective, some pieces are more personal than others. The title piece, for example, describes Gleason\u2019s first week working as a free-clinic medical interpreter until the terrifying discovery of a blood clot in his left shoulder and the \u201cblunt mechanics\u201d involved in the chest surgery he needs. His anxious experiences, chronic physical pain, and frustration dealing with medical apathy as an ER and hospital in-patient will connect and resonate with every reader. Elsewhere, Gleason chronicles heart disease; the dramatic pharmacological evolution of early AIDS drug AZT; gun violence; and prison life. A decade in the making, Gleason\u2019s collection unites everyone with the commonalities of medical necessity, pain, prescription medication, and how suffering from chronic illness at some point in our lives tends to leave us profoundly changed by it.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In this dynamic essay collection and winner of the Yale Nonfiction Book Prize, Gleason straddles the boundaries between being a clinical worker as well as a patient as he examines the interactions between modern health care and the biological vulnerabilities of the human body. For children, as evidenced in the opening piece \u201cInheritance,\u201d illness and, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":5479,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5478"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5478\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}