×


 x 

Shopping cart
6%OFFWilliam O´rourke - On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical Memoir - 9780268037260 - V9780268037260
Stock image for illustration purposes only - book cover, edition or condition may vary.

On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical Memoir

€ 25.99
€ 24.33
You save € 1.66!
FREE Delivery in Ireland
Description for On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical Memoir Paperback. With a description of what an MI feels like and how people around the patient react, this memoir provides a view of the author's experience and the emotions that accompanied it. It describes the pain of the attack, the forced inactivity of recuperation, and the melancholy of embracing life anew while accepting a heightened awareness of mortality. Num Pages: 144 pages. BIC Classification: BGA; MJD; VFJB. Category: (G) General (US: Trade). Dimension: 205 x 143 x 12. Weight in Grams: 249.

“As I walked away with my refreshments, I felt something peculiar. It was so strange it stopped me mid-step. I was forty-five years old, and I had felt many things, but never before this particular feeling: I felt a click deep inside. The image the sensation produced in my mind was of a BB, a small round piece of copper-colored lead, falling into a socket. It was a very clear image. A BB is tiny, but the one I imagined felt infinitesimal, microscopic. Yet I felt it, a click, metal on metal—like an expensive, microscopic gear had slipped, some exquisite ... Read more

That was October 26, 1991, in what became a singularly awful day in the life of William O’Rourke. Minutes later, at the beginning of a Notre Dame football game, he began to suffer his heart attack. O’Rourke’s account of that day, and everything that followed, is personal, informative, humorous, and highly literate. With its extended description of what an MI feels like and how people around the patient react, his memoir provides a bedside view of his experience and all of the emotions—both extraordinary and quotidian—that accompanied it.

What is startling is how that momentous event, the heart attack, divides life irretrievably into a “before” and “after.” Gone are the assumptions of what is safe and healthy; replacing them is a newly-forged relation of mind and body, a treacherous one which breeds a physical paranoia that only lessens after months. O’Rourke vividly describes the extreme pain of the attack, the forced inactivity of recuperation, and the melancholy of embracing life anew while accepting a heightened awareness of mortality. He knows his luck in having supportive family and friends, and uses his time away from normal routine to examine his family history for likely genetic proclivities for heart disease.

Through his description of his experience—from MI, to angioplasty, to cardiac catheterization to, fourteen years later, a quintuple bypass and a second round of cardio-rehabilitation—he asks us to change behaviors we can affect and pay attention to our health. It does, after all, come down to this: “Here’s to life.”

Enriched with a medical glossary and selected bibliography, this is a helpful compendium for other recuperating patients and their families, or anyone concerned about heart disease, or interested in memoir.

Show Less

Product Details

Format
Paperback
Publication date
2006
Publisher
University of Notre Dame Press
Condition
New
Number of Pages
168
Place of Publication
Notre Dame IN, United States
ISBN
9780268037260
SKU
V9780268037260
Shipping Time
Usually ships in 7 to 11 working days
Ref
99-1

About William O´rourke
William O'Rourke is the author of The Harrisburg 7 and the New Catholic Left; Signs of the Literary Times: Essays, Reviews, Profiles, 1970–1992; Campaign America '96: The View From the Couch; Campaign America 2000: The View From the Couch; and the novels The Meekness of Isaac, Idle Hands, Criminal Tendencies, and Notts. He is a professor of English at the ... Read more

Reviews for On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical Memoir
"O'Rourke' s book and its long description of having a heart attack may scare the bejesus out of you, but it certainly sheds a lot of light on the subject. He's writing about what he knows and he knows a lot. His book is full of life—full of heart—and necessary reading for anyone who's ever thought twice about the tough ... Read more

Goodreads reviews for On Having a Heart Attack: A Medical Memoir


Subscribe to our newsletter

News on special offers, signed editions & more!