Burn Unit: Saving Lives After the Flames

This book is exceptional. It goes into details and explains what happens to the burn victim's body and why it happens. I would recommend this book to medical students...but is also a good read to those not in the medical field. It has a story like flow and is presented in a very interesting way that captures your attention.

On August 3, my wife was burned in central Anatolia. On August 15, we med-vaced her to the United States. On September 1, I bought this book. On September 20, I received the book. I was so rapt by the writing that I finished this book in two days. Understand, my wife was in the hospital at the time. Reading was not a priority. I visited my wife daily while I ran a family and my own business. Sometimes a writer's capabilities can so overwhelm the topic. A good writer can make the worst topics readable. Burns, sores, sepsis, pain, and scars are what I neither care to read about nor wish others to read about. The sterile black ink on the white pages cannot deliver the sensations to you of the stench associated with the dead skin, nor show you the grotesque complexity of the red and yellow skin which bleeds easily and often. I no more would ask a person to experience what my family has lived the past few months, than I would ask them to clean my plumbing. Burns are a horrible topic which Ms. Ravage has managed to make less horrible. I used this book for something more than enjoyment. The doctors' mouths, often as clasped as the arteries of their surgical patients, tell little to the patients' family, and when they speak, the language is too often cliched with inexplicables and nondeterminatives. This book answered questions, told me what to look forward to, and outlined what to anticipate. This was my "Burn Patients' Questions for Dummies." But, written well. I cringed. I cried. I swallowed hard. And, at times, I had to leave the book. The writng and insight were as razor sharp as the scalpels discussed and referenced in the portion discussing grafting. Good work Ms. Ravage! You helped a great deal. I can only tell others in my predicament, read this book. And, after you read the book, you will feel better about what there is looming in the slowly progressing and little discussed world of burns.

Ms. Ravage's book focuses on the Burn Unit at Mass General Hospital, but in the course of providing the context for the current Burn Unit she weaves together several narratives. First, she offers an informative and well-written account of the history of burns and burn treatment from ancient times to modern. Additionally she describes the course of the severe burn injury, the series of shocks severe burns provide to the system and the medical interventions that have been developed in order to allow the burn patient to survive these shocks. Tied to her medical-scientific discussion are profiles of the people who make the Burn Unit work, and accounts of two patients who were treated by them. These case studies are based in large part on interviews with the patients and their families. As a Burn Survivor who spent two months in the MGH Burn Unit not long after this book came out, I can vouch for its accuracy in depicting the unit, the staff, the course of treatment and many of the key issues facing burn survivors. Not everything I have read on the topic has held my interest, but this book did.

I have just today finished Burn Unit. Finishing a book for me is relatively unusual. I always have a few going at a time, and most get only part way - they just don't get picked up again. But I keep returning to this book. Barbara Ravage has written a classic. Her writing is engaging, as she monitors burn survivors Dan and Tom and their families, without giving in to simplification and caricature. These people feel real. Their caregivers are presented in the context of their work. They convey the story of the technology and the medicine of burn care, in a remarkably lucid, interesting way. Their personal lives are, appropriately, only sketched.I had experience in the MGH Burn Unit as a fourth-year med student, in 1973. And I've had 26 years of primary care internal medicine in a rural area. This book has tought me a world of new perspectives and insights, basic science and intensive care medicine, and especially understandings about wound healing.And I believe the author has communicated this difficult material in a manner which will be comprehensible to any serious reader, even one without great technical background. Her ability to appeal to, and to be important to, a diverse reader base, reflects the maturity of her perspective. I have been recommending this book to friends and profiessional colleagues, as a most-worthwhile read. Any care provider will gain valuable understandings from this pleasant task.

Being neither a medical professional nor a burn survivor, I didn't expect to be completely fascinated by this book, but I was - once I started reading it, I really couldn't put it down until I'd finished it. Ms. Ravage's skill in weaving together vivid details of life in the burn unit with overviews of burn science reminded me of one of my favorite writers, John McPhee. Like McPhee, she's able to take a subject the reader knows little about and within a few pages make that subject completely riveting. She also has McPhee's rare ability to illuminate her subject from every possible angle: this book covers the history of burn treatments, stories of some of the most deadly U.S. fires, how the human body responds to burns, the heroic daily work of burn doctors and nurses - and, most unforgettably, the hell endured by recovering burn patients. I was especially impressed by how perfect Ms. Ravage's tone was throughout the book: the scientific passages are easily understandable but not dumbed-down, and the descriptions of the emotionally-charged interactions among the burn unit staff , the patients, and their families are unforgettably moving without a hint of sentimentality. Despite the grimness of the subject, this book leaves you feeling wonderfully inspired by what ordinary people are capable of: unbelievable courage, endurance, devotion, and compassion.