Medicine in Translation: Journeys with My Patients

I am not a doctor or a patient; I have nothing to do with the world of medicine, so I had a bit of trepidation about reading this book. It turns out that it is so well written that I had nothing to worry about! I loved it; I could hardly put it down. It was so interesting and informative and Ofri's character so attractive; there is no reason to not read this book. Besides, I heard that Ofri gives the doctors or/and residents on her team poems in the mornings to get their days started; how special and cool is that? Also, she is the co-founder and editor at the Bellevue Literary Review, a really excellent, high quality literary journal. She knows her literary stuff!

A wonderful and sensitive book that I enjoyed reading. Humans are complex and Danielle takes the time to see through the appearances to understand the inside traumas and stories of her patients and the impacts on their life, and even better she learns from it. I guess I understand better now why I do appreciate so much to be around her. Martine

As an attending physician at New York's Bellevue Hospital, Danielle Ofri has used her superb writing talent to offer the reader a compelling, compassionate and sometimes humorous story of how she and her patients struggle with their medical problems and the difficulty both have in coming to terms with the cultural and language differences of a largely immigrant, poor, population. Never judgmental or condescending, Dr. Ofri gives us a window into how one doctor comes to terms with her own emotions in treating such a complex patient population. I found it to be a real page turner.

From the moment you pick up the book Medicine in Translation, you are drawn into Dr. Ofri's world of medicine, home life and music. These three are the pillars of this book, a sensitive and sometimes heart -rendering portrayal of one very busy doctor's work with patient's many of whom have traveled a long distance between their homeland where torture has maimed their bodies . Along with others who have left a country for more benign reasons, these people arrive at Bellevue Hospital needing medical attention and come under the care of an especially caring, doctor who attempts to provide state of the art medical attention to those who are often undocumented aliens lacking health insurance, money and even a basic language in which to discuss the medical problem. None of this comes easy, not to the beleaguered people who need the help, nor to the doctor who wishes to bestow the treatment learned in medical school but who is often stymied by governmental regulations that govern the dispensation of needed help. A young woman, a mother trying to bring her child over to this country is weakened by a faulty heart that a transplant would certainly remedy and is prevented from applying for it because she is without the proper papers. Imagine trying to work out treatment plans as the two - patient and doctor sitting in one room connected by a telephone and an invisible translator, an unsung hero at Bellevue Hospital who listens to both doctor and patient translating symptoms and intended high-tech medical regime. Dr. Ofri mulls over the difficult situations she encounters at work often mixing her thoughts with pieces from her own life. An approachable doctor, she meets with one of her elderly patients in the building where he lives to discuss his wish to leave the country (and his ailing wife) to return to China for his remaining years. The ethics of leaving a wife who soon will not be able to recognize him to return to his country on first hearing seems callous and maybe selfish to her, but true to herself, she ponders these and other issues, intertwining them with thoughts about her children and their developing lives lived so near yet so far from the problems that her patients wrestle with, thoughtful interludes which provide a mirror on the readers' own lives. A budding cellist, Ofri often expresses her thoughts, medical ones, in terms of music that is always under the surface of her thinking. One patient was advised to have a pacemaker installed in his body even after a first installation did him a great disservice. Despite his deep reluctance to having a new one implanted he agreed to do whatever his beloved doctor suggest he do, based on a long association with her since her days of internship, and so, it was installed. Very much aware of her role in his well being, she listened to his heart some weeks after the procedure and "was greeted with the steady metronome of the pacemaker beat" an unavoidable pairing of the pacemaker

I have been waiting in anticipation for another anthology of stories from Danielle Ofri, and she has delivered! This collection of stories is written in her trademark beautiful prose, but the content is much more substantial and relevant to today's discussions about medical delivery, especially to the poor and uninsured. Dr. Ofri continues to approach difficult subjects with the grace and insight that I would expect from a practitioner finishing her career. Thankfully for us, Dr. Ofri has many more years of medicine to practice and many more books to write (hint, hint)... Thank you for writing, Danielle. This review is written by James Feinstein MD, the author of Short White Coat: Lessons from Patients on Becoming a Doctor.