Neil Spector

The author was a wonderful, empathic hospital physician who spent much time with his patients, listened to them, held their hands, did everything he could for them; they were critically ill. He was on call 24 hours a day and got little sleep.

He used all his energy on his patients and thus failed to take adequate care of himself.

Consequently, he himself was stricken with a life-threatening disease, ventricular tachycardia, which was “a potentially fatal arrhythmia where the heart beats dangerously out of control”. It was the leading cause of out-of-hospital sudden deaths.

Neil had only 10 percent heart function.

He had a loving wife, Denise, and their strongest desire was to have children, but they lost two unborn babies.

Eventually, the couple were blessed with a little daughter, Céleste.

Neil’s condition worsened and he strongly suspected that he had Lyme disease but his doctors always denied this since his blood-tests were negative for the disease.

Eventually, Neil got a heart pacemaker with defibrillator, the latter giving rise to dreadfully painful electrical shocks.

This is a deeply moving story written by Neil about his own life and illness. Being a physician, he had insight into all his symptoms, and being both patient and physician had more insight than the doctors attending him. And it turned out he was correct, he did have Lyme disease, an extremely serious disease.

The book includes Neil’s personal and touching poems, finally poems I could understand. There are many photos of the whole family.

This is well-written, heart-warming, insightful book that I can highly recommend.… (plus d'informations)

A doctor's story of his own healing

There is to admire in this book. From one medical emergency to another, the narrator manages to survive and thrive. For me, the vast amount of religious content was perplexing, coming from a medical doctor. The silliest coincidences, for example that a consulting physician is named Dr. Perfect, is used as proof that God exists and wants this particular person to survive. The author includes a lot of terrible verse. Any editor, worth his or her salt, should have edited this saccharine greeting card verse out of the book.

Nevertheless, the saga of survival against all odds was enjoyable overall.… (plus d'informations)