Tales of Infectious Illness, Emergency Room Peril

MANEATER AND OTHER TRUE STORIES OF A LIFE IN INFECTIOUS DISEASES By Dr. Pamela Nagami, Renaissance Books, $24.95, 287 pages

Pamela Nagami, who practices here in Southern California, is a compelling character. As a child fascinated by nature, specifically worms, she went on to master the scientific method while maintaining the childhood curiosity and open mind that become great assets for someone seeking to solve difficult puzzles. She spent years trying to find her place in the medical world and explains, in these stories, how she became an infectious disease specialist. Today, she runs around in purple high-top sneakers, talks fast and has four beepers.

Despite her constant racing, though, she’s somehow managed to let her mind record the subtle sensations of seeing, touching and even smelling that bring her cases to life. In fact, as she puts it, she lets the infections get under her own skin. In this marvelous volume of tales about hunting down infection in the emergency room, the operating room and the intensive care unit, Nagami zooms in like a microscope on infections. She presents them, with all their drama, in the context of how they alter patients’ and doctors’ lives. Along the way, she conveys an amazing amount of medical information that’s easy to absorb.

Using her sharp storytelling skills, she illustrates for us how vulnerable we all are to microscopic intruders and how having the right doctor on our side can mean the difference between living and becoming another statistic in the morbidity reports.

ER: ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK, By Dr. Joel Cohen, New Horizon Press, $14.95, 199 pages

Joel Cohen has a point. You go to an emergency room seeking care and comfort, and instead, you’re exposed to a slew of hidden risks and dangers. ERs have become a court-of-last-resort for many Americans, a place to go when they lack a family doctor or when a problem they’ve neglected becomes critical. It’s also the first stop for gunshot, accident and traumatic injuries. Put that all together and set it in the chaos of a big city, and you’ve got the makings of potential disaster.

In this book, Cohen, an emergency room doctor himself, uses real-life stories to illustrate the potential perils of an ER visit. He explains the structure and jobs of operating room personnel and provides advice on how best to explain your condition, get proper attention and make the process more efficient. In essence, it involves being an active patient who arrives armed with a good medical history, can speak up (but is never abusive to staff members), knows the kinds of symptoms that can’t be ignored and knows when to call in reinforcements.

Cohen reviews the hierarchy of providers, such as doctors, nurses and clerks, and the hierarchy of patients (paying and privately insured patients are less easily shoved aside than so-called service patients whose care is funded by welfare or who lack insurance). Cohen includes a very helpful primer on common symptoms and conditions and how to discern when they might be serious enough to merit ER attention.

Reading this book is likely to prepare you for what to expect in a medical emergency, and that alone is likely to improve the quality of your care.