
When Death Becomes Life
Notes from a Transplant Surgeon
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Narrated by:
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Josh Bloomberg
About this listen
"With When Death Becomes Life, Joshua Mezrich has performed the perfect core biopsy of transplantation - a clear and compelling account of the grueling daily work, the spellbinding history and the unsettling ethical issues that haunt this miraculous lifesaving treatment. Mezrich's compassionate and honest voice, punctuated by a sharp and intelligent wit, render the enormous subject not just palatable but downright engrossing." (Pauline Chen, author of Final Exam: A Surgeon’s Reflections on Mortality)
A gifted surgeon illuminates one of the most profound, awe-inspiring, and deeply affecting achievements of modern-day medicine - the movement of organs between bodies - in this exceptional work of death and life that takes its place beside Atul Gawande’s Complications, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s The Emperor of All Maladies, and Jerome Groopman’s How Doctors Think.
At the University of Wisconsin, Dr. Joshua Mezrich creates life from loss, transplanting organs from one body to another. In this intimate, moving work, he illuminates the field of transplantation that enables this kind of miracle to happen every day.
When Death Becomes Life is a thrilling look at how science advances on a grand scale to improve human lives. Mezrich examines more than 100 years of remarkable medical breakthroughs, connecting this fascinating history with the inspiring and heartbreaking stories of his transplant patients. Combining gentle sensitivity with scientific clarity, Mezrich reflects on his calling as a doctor and introduces the modern pioneers who made transplantation a reality - maverick surgeons whose feats of imagination, bold vision, and daring risk-taking generated techniques and practices that save millions of lives around the world.
Mezrich takes us inside the operating room and unlocks the wondrous process of transplant surgery, a delicate, intense ballet requiring precise timing, breathtaking skill, and at times, creative improvisation. In illuminating this work, Mezrich touches the essence of what it means to be alive. Most physicians fight death, but in transplantation, doctors take from death. Mezrich shares his gratitude and awe for the privilege of being part of this transformative exchange as the dead give their last breath of life to the living. After all, the donors are his patients, too.
When Death Becomes Life also engages in fascinating ethical and philosophical debates: How much risk should a healthy person be allowed to take to save someone she loves? Should a patient suffering from alcoholism receive a healthy liver? What defines death, and what role did organ transplantation play in that definition? The human story behind the most exceptional medicine of our time, Mezrich’s riveting audiobook is a beautiful, poignant reminder that a life lost can also offer the hope of a new beginning.
©2019 Joshua D. Mezrich (P)2019 HarperCollins PublishersListeners also enjoyed...
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In Shock is a riveting first-hand account from a young critical care physician, who in the passage of a moment is transfigured into a dying patient. This transposition, coincidentally timed at the end of her medical training, instantly lays bare the vast chasm between the conventional practice of medicine and the stark reality of the prostrate patient.
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Read this book!
- By CT on 11-08-17
By: Dr. Rana Awdish
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Unnatural Causes
- The Life and Many Deaths of Britain's Top Forensic Pathologist
- By: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Narrated by: Dr Richard Shepherd
- Length: 11 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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As the country's top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right - and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?
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Boring!
- By Zoesmydog on 06-21-19
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All That Moves Us
- A Pediatric Neurosurgeon, His Young Patients, and Their Stories of Grace and Resilience
- By: Jay Wellons
- Narrated by: Jay Wellons
- Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Tumors, injuries, ruptured vascular malformations—there is almost no such thing as a non-urgent brain surgery when it comes to kids. For a pediatric neurosurgeon working in the medical minefield of the brain—in which a single millimeter in every direction governs something that makes us essentially human—every day presents the challenge, and the opportunity, to give a new lease on life to a child for whom nothing is yet fully determined and all possibilities still exist.
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The best narration I've heard in a long time.
- By Zoe on 10-29-22
By: Jay Wellons
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The Emperor of All Maladies
- A Biography of Cancer
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Fred Sanders
- Length: 22 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation. The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance but also of hubris, arrogance, paternalism, and misperception, all leveraged against a disease that, just three decades ago, was thought to be easily vanquished in an all-out "war against cancer".
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Incredible
- By S.R.E. on 03-02-16
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When Breath Becomes Air
- By: Paul Kalanithi, Abraham Verghese - foreword
- Narrated by: Sunil Malhotra, Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 5 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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At the age of thirty-six, on the verge of completing a decade’s worth of training as a neurosurgeon, Paul Kalanithi was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer. One day he was a doctor treating the dying, and the next he was a patient struggling to live. And just like that, the future he and his wife had imagined evaporated.
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Phenomenal book!
- By A. Potter on 01-16-16
By: Paul Kalanithi, and others
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Being Mortal
- Medicine and What Matters in the End
- By: Atul Gawande
- Narrated by: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 9 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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In Being Mortal, best-selling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending. Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the human spirit.
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A Walk through the Valley of the Shadow
- By George on 11-02-14
By: Atul Gawande
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Sapiens
- A Brief History of Humankind
- By: Yuval Noah Harari
- Narrated by: Derek Perkins
- Length: 15 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Most books about the history of humanity pursue either a historical or a biological approach, but Dr. Yuval Noah Harari breaks the mold with this highly original book. From examining the role evolving humans have played in the global ecosystem to charting the rise of empires, Sapiens integrates history and science to reconsider accepted narratives, connect past developments with contemporary concerns, and examine specific events within the context of larger ideas.
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Should be required reading
- By Blue Zion on 12-22-18
What listeners say about When Death Becomes Life
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- Kayla!
- 09-09-20
Great
I am a nursing student and this book was very educational and humbling. I appreciate all of the kind health care personal out there.
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- T
- 04-08-21
Excellent book
So many stories each with its own character. I truly enjoyed this, especially since I'm one of the very first organ donors and I know some of the historical people mentioned.
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- Lauren E. Dillon
- 08-11-23
Mesmerizing
Fascinating history and contemporary tales of transplant surgery. At times heartbreaking but always interesting, this book was well worth my time. It makes me want to get involved more with organ donation as well. The narrator did a great job conveying the story without being attention-seeking. Overall a great read.
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- Anonymous User
- 10-17-23
Eye opener
Never having worked in medicine, this book provides a window into a fascinating field, thank you Dr. Mezrick.
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- Andres
- 10-27-21
Beautiful and remarkable story. Great performance!
I was fascinated by this story and moved by its implications. Dr.Mezrich does a phenomenal job exposing the the hidden world of organ transplantation, detailing vividly the many triumphs and tragedies that make this field such a unique endeavor.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 11-03-23
Great book for understanding transplant process for donor and recipient
Having worked in organ and tissue recover Thai book draw a insightful and true picture if the process and struggles from both sides.
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- Bonny
- 01-22-19
Memoir and history, beautifully written
When Death Becomes Life is an interesting memoir and history of organ transplantation from transplant surgeon Dr. Joshua Mezrich. While I enjoyed his writing about the history, researchers and physicians that brought us to this point in time with transplantations, I enjoyed his writing about his own background, how and why he became a transplant surgeon, and his own patients just as much or more. Dr. Mezrich always maintains an awareness and respect for the great gift that donors and their families are giving, and reminds readers of that often. I loved reading about the technical details of kidney transplants, but Dr. Mezrich also reminds the readers that even though it may be an almost-routine procedure, it is really never routine. He recounts his enthusiasm at seeing a kidney become pink with blood flow and begin producing urine, and also writes about heart, lung, liver, and pancreas transplants, and the inherent difficulties with them. I thoroughly enjoyed the chapter about how cyclosporine was discovered and what a huge difference it made in transplantations. After all, transplantation is as much about immunology as it is about surgical skill, and Dr. Mezrich recounts all of this in his thoroughly enjoyable book.
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10 people found this helpful
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- JoLynn
- 05-13-20
Good - if you’re intimately involved in the field
I loved this book, but I also am a PA in transplant surgery. I think would struggle to relate if I wasn’t intimately and passionately involved in the field.
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- Anonymous User
- 08-26-24
The end. it gave me chills.
Nothing precisely. the book is well written and the narration is also superb. it's one of those books you will remember for some time. Thank you Audible
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- LHT
- 06-07-22
Understanding the art of transplant
For anyone who has received a transplant, who has been a donor, or is a family of either, this extensive history and experiences of a transplant Doctor is must listening.
The development of solid organ transplants has been built upon the shoulders of the pioneering doctors one by one. Mezrich’s story of each stage of the progress is presented in a clear understandable fashion.
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1 person found this helpful