Just Here Trying to Save a Few Lives: Tales of Life and Death from the ER

by Pamela Grim

Book Overview

Forget the made-up medical dramas on television; this is the real thing--gripping, powerful, and memorable.--"Kirkus Reviews." An emergency medical doctor offers an insider's look into the true drama, action, and heartache of a physician's life in the Emergency Room.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446677574
• ISBN13: 9780446677578
• Release Date: January 2002
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.64 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Just here trying to save a few lives

This was an excellent book, great material and well written. You could actually put yourself in the authors shoes.

True Picture of the ER

As a medical student and a former employee of the emergency department, I found this book to be a very realistic, while heartrending account of what actually occurs in the ER. Dr. Grim lays out a beautiful picture of the unseen (to everyday society) tragedies that occur on a daily basis. I loved her writing style and accounts of her overseas ventures. She painted a picture of a Macedonian refugee camp so vivid, I feel like I have been there. I hope that she continues to write. I think medical students, especially those interested in emergency medicine, and others in the medical field will love this book as much as I did.

The ninth circle of hell

The ninth circle of hell in this autobiography of emergency room physician Pamela Grim is the South Side of Chicago. When she burns out trying to heal the unceasing stream of addicts, assault victims, and alcoholics who flood into her emergency room, she joins Médecins sans Frontières and descends even further into what might be the modern tenth and eleventh circles of hell: Bosnia in the depths of war and genocide; and Africa during a meningitis epidemic.Grim, indeed. This is not a book to read if you're already feeling depressed. I thought I wouldn't have a problem with this story because I'd been watching that interesting and horrifying bit of reality T.V. called, "Trauma: Life in the E.R." Now I realize that even though 'Trauma' viewers see everything from surgeons rooting around in a gunshot victim's intestines to ER physicians trying to save an eyeball that has popped out of an accident victim's head, reality T.V. doesn't come close to Dr. Grim's reality.Some of her saddest cases, in Chicago at least, involve babies born to cocaine-addicted, alcoholic mothers who don't come into contact with a physician until they're giving birth. Babies in America aren't usually born in an emergency room--except when Dr. Grim happens to be moonlighting in a hospital that doesn't have an obstetrician on site, or when the mother is wheeled into ER with two bullets through her brain. In one of the most gruesome episodes in this book, she assists in the birth of an anencephalic baby: "There was a rivulet of fluid, and then this 'thing' slithered out onto the cart..." Never mind. At least the babies in Chicago don't die of tetanus like they still do in Africa. In her preface to the chapter, "How to Treat Tetanus," Dr. Grim quotes from the Qu' aran: Also a sign for them is that we bear their progeny on the laden ship. / If we will, we drown them, / and there is no helper for them/ nor are they saved, unless as a mercy from us...There is very little mercy in this chapter about a Nigerian police officer who dies of a treatable, preventable disease that Dr. Grim never experienced in all of her years in Chicago. She does what she can for the man, scrounging medicine from her meningitis cases, taping "TOUCH THIS IV AND YOU DIE" to the man's IV, even transporting him from the Médecins sans Frontières field clinic to a 'tetanus hospital' ten miles away. The so-called 'hospital' had no medicine, no beds, not even a dark, quiet place for him to die. Some of the author's most poignant musings occur while she is travelling with the dying man. She thinks about the equipment, techniques, and medicine that would have been able to treat this man in America--even on the South Side of Chicago.This is a profoundly moving book.

Abraham Verghese and Perri Klass Are Right!

Blurbs from the above physician-writers (who are two of my favorite writers, period) grace this book's dustjacket-and with good reason. Dr. Grim's ER tales are fast-paced, clearsighted, and seem to me to be brutally honest and self-reflective. Grim keeps the larger world and its realities in focus as she explores the peculiar microcosm of the ER, which she suggests is similar to what one would find under a large rock amid a beautiful meadow: mud, worms, slugs, and skittering things which race away from the daylight. The previous customer reviewer, another ER doctor, is harshly critical of Grim: s/he seems to be writing from the height of an unwritten memoir! For me, Grim is a compelling realist who perceives and writes vividly and concretely. One will not easily forget the afghan knitting nurse, the Cole-Porter singing cop (who later dies in the ER room), the farmer's wife with the elephant on her chest, Murray the neurotic resident, or the fly-eyed foetus.

A must read for all you armchair MD's!

After enjoying Dr. Grim's articles in Discover magazine, I couldn't wait to read her debut novel. I was not disappointed. Although graphic and gut wrenching, it's a true page turner. A must read for anyone interested in emergency medicine. This book sheds new light on the real ER and dims my view of the television ER. I look forward to more from Dr. Grim.