Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years PDF Book

Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years PDF, ePub eBook Kindle

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Author : Michael J. Collins
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When Michael Collins decides to become a surgeon, he is totally unprepared for the chaotic life of a resident at a major hospital. A natural overachiever, Collins' success, in college and medical school led to a surgical residency at one of the most respected medical centers in the world, the famed Mayo Clinic. But compared to his fellow residents Collins feels inadequate and unprepared. All too soon, the euphoria of beginning his career as an orthopedic resident gives way to the feeling he is a counterfeit, an imposter who has infiltrated a society of brilliant surgeons.

This story of Collins' four-year surgical residency traces his rise from an eager but clueless first-year resident to accomplished Chief Resident in his final year. With unparalleled humor, he recounts the disparity between people's perceptions of a doctor's glamorous life and the real thing: a succession of run down cars that are towed to the junk yard, long weekends moonlighting at rural hospitals, a family that grows larger every year, and a laughable income.

Collins' good nature helps him over some of the rough spots but cannot spare him the harsh reality of a doctor's life. Every day he is confronted with decisions that will change people's lives-or end them-forever. A young boy's leg is mangled by a tractor: risk the boy's life to save his leg, or amputate immediately? A woman diagnosed with bone cancer injures her hip: go through a painful hip operation even though she has only months to live? Like a jolt to the system, he is faced with the reality of suffering and death as he struggles to reconcile his idealism and aspiration to heal with the recognition of his own limitations and imperfections.

Unflinching and deeply engaging, Hot Lights, Cold Steel is a humane and passionate reminder that doctors are people too. This is a gripping memoir, at times devastating, others triumphant, but always compulsively readable.

Book ID Asin: 0312337787
Book Title: Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years
Book Author: Michael J. Collins
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Book Format Name: Kindle
Book Format Price: $9.55
Book Format Name: Audiobook
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Book Format Name: Hardcover
Book Format Price: $16.87
Book Format Name: Paperback
Book Format Price: $14.59
Book Format Name: AudioCD
Book Format Price: $29.99
Book Price: $16.87
Book Category: Books, Biographies & Memoirs, Professionals & Academics and unknown
Book Rating: 819 ratings

Book Product Detail

Publisher ‏ : ‎ St. Martin's Press; 1st edition (February 1, 2005)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312337787
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312337780
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.25 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.38 x 1.29 x 9.56 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #786,710 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #230 in Medical History & Records (Books)
- #1,635 in Medical Professional Biographies
- #84,088 in Health, Fitness & Dieting (Books)

Customer Reviews:
819 ratings

From Publishers Weekly

Collins begins this personal chronicle with an account of a choice he had to make between amputating a 14-year-old boy's leg and saving the limb at a greater risk to the boy's life. (He amputated the leg.) This dilemma came at the conclusion of Collins's grueling four years of residency at the Mayo Clinic, culminating in his appointment as chief resident in orthopedic surgery. Now in practice in Illinois, he details, with admirable humor and insight, the early, virtually sleepless years when he learned not only to perfect his craft but to come to terms with the emotional impact of causing pain and losing patients. Collins brings to life the dramatic moments when he made his first, terrifying incision and hand-drilled a traction pin into a weeping six-year–old's leg. Collins and his wife, Patti, wanted a large family, but the economic strain of having three children in three years (they eventually had 12) forced him to moonlight every other weekend at rural hospitals. There are moving passages about his love for Patti and the bonds he developed with other residents, and empathetic evocations of those he treats. Collins describes powerfully how he came to understand that his calling was not just to develop as a skilled surgical technician, but to treat his patients humanely as individuals.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* If he didn't feel overwhelmed before the Mayo Clinic senior orthopedic surgery resident lobbed a beeper at him with the nonchalant order, "Cover for me," 29-year-old ex-cabdriver, ex-construction worker, and, at the time, brand-new resident Collins certainly did then. It was his first day on the job, and instantly he began fielding calls from staff nurses requesting orders for patients he hadn't laid eyes on. If it hadn't been for his innate sense of humor--brilliantly demonstrated in this memoir of his Mayo residency--and a sense of perspective derived from that experience, he might have failed. He didn't, and here he honors those who helped him along the way and those whom he helped. As a man who recognizes that he, too, makes his living with his hands, Collins anguishes over the options available to a carpenter who had severed four fingers. After assisting at a young cancer patient's leg amputation, only to learn later that she had died within months, anyway, he agonizes over what drew him to his profession in the first place and what could possibly keep him on course. "I wanted to be the guy who confronted the arbitrariness of life and strangled the unfairness out of it." Instead, while honing his craft, he learned from a Vietnam vet that the main thing patients deserve is compassion. If Collins' scalpel is as sharp as his pen, his patients are in capable hands, indeed. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Review

Name: J. Martin
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: An enjoyable read
Date: Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2022
Review: My wife’s grandfather trained as a surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. His experiences and fondness for “the clinic” sounded very similar and familiar. An enjoyable read and it was very interesting to read about his experiences.

Name: Shinobi
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Invaluable for those contemplating a career in medicine.
Date: Reviewed in the United States on July 1, 2022
Review: Hot Lights Cold Steel is a satisfying surgical memoir. It deals primarily with Dr. Collins' time as an orthopedic surgery resident at the Mayo Clinic.

Dr. Collins does a good job of showcasing the pressure put upon him. Replacing hips is not easy, we learn, because mistakes can sever nerves or do other damage.

Society expects surgical residents to survive on meagre pay, but Dr. Collins has a family to take care
of as well. His path to resident included a stint as construction labourer.

If you are contemplating medicine; the sooner you read this book the better.

Name: Thomas Kelso
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: A real life, authentic look into the life of an orthopedic resident.
Date: Reviewed in the United States on May 24, 2022
Review: Orthopedic residency is a crucible from which a medical or osteopathic school graduate emerges with the tools, both mental and physical, to serve their patients. It is a test of intelligence, coordination, endurance, and integrity. Michael J. Collins pulls back the curtain, allowing an all-access look into the grueling five years of post-graduate surgical training. I experienced orthopedic residency at a different institution but the experience was the same. The story is told from the perspective of one who went through it before the current work hour limitations on residents, however I doubt much has changed. Residents still make the same personal sacrifices and have the same drive to master orthopedic knowledge and skills in those precious few years. Collins has written a classic.

Name: Melissa Cable
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Very Entertaining Book
Date: Reviewed in the United States on May 26, 2022
Review: I enjoyed the stories about the doctor and his classmates so much. I had a grandfather that was a doctor in the early 1900's so I gravitate toward doctor books. I barely knew him so I guess i am interested in what his job was like as he went through med school and learned how to be a physician. I found Hot Lights, Cold Steel to answer many of those questions. The author was humorous and a wonderful story teller. I was so engaged with this book that I hated to stop reading each night to go to sleep. If you like doctor books, you will love this one!!

Name: Allyson M. W. Dyar
Rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Title: The Making of an Orthopedic Surgeon
Date: Reviewed in the United States on February 12, 2022
Review: I subscribe to a number of mailing lists featuring books on sale. I find many really good books this way and this is how I found the book <i>Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years</i>.

I found the book to be a fairly standard medical memoir, following Dr Collins as he begins and ends his residency in orthopedics at the prestigious Mayo Clinic.

This book is well-written and worth reading if you enjoy medical memoirs. It isn't the best medical memoir that I've read, but it's well worth your time if this is your bag.

Name: J. James Baldes
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: great read
Date: Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2022
Review: Born and raised in Rochester and Father at Mayo, a lot of memories from the book about the city, surrounding countryside while growing up there.

Name: Delores Bender
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Great Read
Date: Reviewed in the United States on May 23, 2022
Review: I couldn't put this book down. I laughed at times. Dr Collins wrote a wonderful book, he had a very hard residency, moonlighting on his days off and working at his regular shifts plus at Mayo Clinic. I wonder how many kids he really had.

Name: C. Middleton
Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars
Title: Blood, Sweat and Tears
Date: Reviewed in the United States on December 6, 2005
Review: This is a well-written and highly polished memoir about an Orthopaedic surgeon's four year residency at the famous Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Dr. Collins is a good writer, giving the impression that he poured his heart and soul into this text: it's funny, at times sad and gruesome in parts, but again, reading about the training surgeon, one gets the distinct feeling that these men and women, having to run through the depths of hell to finally get qualified, must be born to the task - or simply masochistic by nature.

If this memoir is to be believed, and there's no reason why it shouldn't, every nightmare story that you have heard about the four-year residency is absolutely true. It's astounding that these people manage to survive - the tortuous long stretches on their feet saving lives, sometimes reaching 60 to 70 hours is nothing less than miraculous. Treating patients day and night, constantly worrying that you'll screw up, taking peoples lives in your hands could send the most grounded individual around the bend - in some cases it does, but for the most part, these people get through to become qualified surgeons, as did Dr. Collins, but through a lot of blood sweat and tears.

Hot Lights, Cold Steel reads like a novel, as the characterization, structure of the plot and the pathos, the utter sadness of some of his cases, and the joy and exhilaration of his successes, had me just as enthralled as any top selling thriller. Dr. Collins has a gift for description as he illustrates the amputation of a limb, including a section of the patient's pelvis, in such detailed imagery, that it became difficult to read. He also has a great sense of humour, which I believe is so necessary to survive in this profession.

One of the more terrible of the Dr.'s experiences was the attempted resuscitation of a six year old boy who had been run over by a drunk. Collins and the ER staff did everything humanly possible to save the child, but his injuries were too severe. The undeserved death of innocence is hard to take, and it affected the attending staff in a big way. This was also terribly difficult to read. Then there was the young kindergarten teacher who just came in because of a slight pain in her hip, to discover her entire skeleton was riddled with cancer, unfortunately she died six months later. After reading about these cases one realizes that life is fleeting and fragile, and should never be taken for granted.

I have always had great respect for those in the medical profession, but this book has doubled that respect and opened my eyes to their tenacity, courage and skill. This is a great book and is highly recommended.

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