So if you like eclectic, medical stories (and you must or why would you be reading this blog?), I highly recommend Josh Bazell's new book Beat the Reaper. It's a fast-paced thriller (I'm not sure what that means exactly but that's what they're calling it) about a former Mafia guy turned doctor. Now, I know that sounds kind of boring. I was bored when I first read the description too. But Bazell, who is a physician, has created a character, Pietro Brnwa, who is a fascinating mix of a thug who's funny, witty, worldly and knowledgeable. And he takes you on a ride that will have you laughing while learning about medicine, the Holocaust and the Witness Protection program. Oh, and this book is also knee-related because one of the storylines revolves around a woman who's been diagnosed with cancer of the knee. And you won't believe the ending. All I'll say about that is remember Chekhov's famous advice: "a pistol on the wall in the first act must be fired by the last act."
Here's an excerpt from the beginning of the book:
So I'm on my way to work and I stop to watch a pigeon fight a rat in the snow, and some fuckhead tries to mug me! Naturally there's a gun. He comes up behind me and sticks it into the base of my skull. It's cold, and it actually feels sort of good, in an acupressure kind of way. "Take it easy, Doc," he says.
Which explains that, at least. Even at five in the morning, I'm not the kind of guy you mug. I look like an Easter Island sculpture of a longshoreman. But the fuckhead can see the blue scrub pants under my overcoat, and the ventilated green plastic clogs, so he thinks I've got drugs and money on me. And maybe that I've takensome kind of oath not to kick his fuckhead ass for trying to mug me.
I barely have enough drugs and money to get me through the day. And the only oath I took, as I recall, was to first do no harm. I'm thinking we're past that point.
"Okay," I say, raising my hands.
The rat and the pigeon run away. Chickenshits.
I turn around, which rolls the gun off my skull and leaves my raised right hand above the fuckhead's arm. I wrap his elbow and jerk upwards, causing the ligaments to pop like champagne corks.
Let's take a moment to smell the rose known as the elbow.
The two bones of the forearm, the ulna and the radius, move independently of each other, and also rotate. You can see this by turning your hand from palm up, in which position the ulna and radius are parallel, to palm down, where they're crossed into an "X."[ 1 ] They therefore require a complicated anchoring system at the elbow, with the ligaments wrapping the various bone ends in spoolable and unspoolable ribbons that look like the tape on the handle of a tennis racket. It's a shame to tear these ligaments apart.
But the fuckhead and I have a worse problem right now. Namely that while my right hand has been fucking up his elbow, my left, having somehow come into position by my right ear, is now hooking toward his throat in a knife-edge.
And it just gets better from there.
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