Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Table

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The first few chapters cover Westaby’s childhood, inspiration and medical training. Born in the post-war baby boom years he decided young that he wished to be a heart surgeon after watching a television programme, ‘Your Life in Their Hands’, in which American surgeons were able to close a hole in a patient’s heart thanks to the newly created heart-lung machine. Westaby gained entrance to a local grammar school and from there worked towards his dream of medical school. As a teenager he took menial jobs at a hospital, learning as much as he could through observation. His years of medical training at Charing Cross and the Royal Brompton in London brought him to his first surgeries, where he learned that a certain arrogance is necessary for a successful outcome. A surgeon must believe in their own abilities if they are to innovate and thereby save more lives. When a patient is cut open on an operating table the surgeons cannot know exactly what problems they will be required to deal with. When a surgeon remains focused on helping as many patients as his ability will allow, some will die. But we should no longer accept substandard facilities, teams or equipment. Otherwise patients will die needlessly.” The way the book is written allows someone who is certainly not scientific-minded - ie. me - to understand (and I use the word 'understand' in a loosest possible way) what Stephen Westaby and his team doing and why... (sort of!) It's not such complex language that you can't follow it, and Westaby explains things in a way that makes it a lot clearer and accessible to everyone.

Fragile Lives by Stephen Westaby; Emergency Admissions by Kit

Slightly disappointed he didn't narrate it himself... only because it is always more interesting (to me anyway) to hear the writer's voice.. but not everyone is meant to be a narrator of audiobooks *shrugs* The narrator here was very good, pleasant voice and I have a crush on his accent haha. We will follow the author from the main reason he got interested in cardiac surgery, till quite recent in time thoughout a series of surgeries. He will walk us through a series of cases, and patients, that will follow his career and development as surgeon from the most simple to the really challenging ones that will leave you bitting your nails hoping for the best.

Like Henry Marsh, Westaby has become disgruntled with an NHS bogged down in bureaucracy. It's only briefly mentioned at the end, but you can sense his frustration with the system in some of the cases. Who thinks it makes sense to send senior surgeons on courses to learn CPR? And the death list! Some government idiot decided to name and shame surgeons who have deaths on their operating tables. Seriously ill people will die sometimes. This just deters surgeons from taking risks, risks that could save lives. Most people given a chance of a slow and painful death or a risky surgery, would rather have the surgery. Instead they are filled with drugs and sent home to die.

Fragile Lives by Stephen Westaby - review - Evening Standard

We are committed to improving maternal care for Pakistan and Kenya’s poorest mothers and their babies, as well as supporting the nutritional health of women and girls. We’re achieving this through offering a higher standard of medical care and nutrition, as well as working alongside local midwives and doctors to support them in caring for new mothers and their babies. We also offer education and support to mothers, empowering them to give their babies the best possible start to life. Julie is alive today, as is Kirsty, operated on as a six-month-old baby, with Westaby innovating as he cuts, and learning in both cases that, given a chance, the heart can heal itself: a groundbreaking discovery. Westaby often describes the torture of empathy and the need for a surgeon to avoid it so that he can stay focused and keep trying to save lives. But his empathy still shines through in every chapter. No more so than in ‘The Girl with No Name’, when Westaby is working in Saudi Arabia for a few months and he must operate on a baby boy whose Somali-born mother was kidnapped and sold into sexual slavery before escaping and walking countless miles holding her dying child before rescue. An incredible memoir from one of the world’s most eminent heart surgeons and some of the most remarkable and poignant cases he’s worked on. Confidence is good. Too much confidence is just plain arrogant and quite frankly dangerous when you work in the medical field.This is an incredible compilation. I'm not sure why, but with medicine, despite the fact that you lose more patients than you can save, it's those few survivors that give you the ability to persevere. They make it all matter. It doesn't matter how smart you are, you just need to be smart enough to care more than others, to be more passionate than others. It's tragic that a healthcare system is in the hands of political leaders who usually don't know enough about the preciousness of human life. Its not just the NHS, its a lot of countries' healthcare systems. Its tragic because lives are lost when support was needed. Amniocentesis. A healthcare provider takes a sample of amniotic fluid, which is then tested for the FMR1 mutation.

Stephen Westaby on Why He Wrote Fragile Live - Waterstones

These features include a narrow face, large head, large ears, flexible joints, flat feet, and a prominent forehead. Good nutrition for both mothers and babies can make a world of difference. If a mother is well nourished, she will be healthy and strong for her baby, better able to breastfeed and more likely to survive pregnancy-related complications. For babies, good nutrition from birth means they will grow stronger and more resilient, with each day of life.It is raw medicine, meaning sometimes it goes really well and everything is amazing, but some others it does not. And I think it was really important to deliver that message as well. Because it is a history of a human being, and only success would have made it boring, dull, and not realistic at all. And well, if it was only failure, he would not have become the eminence he is at the moment in hin field. A true trailblazer but oddly for a man of this nature and genius not at all egotistical, he came across brilliantly and all the stories he told, all the people he saved and the ones he couldn't will stay with me for a long long time. From being a working class boy from Scunthorpe to operating on some of the most high profile cases of heart surgery the world has seen, I felt like I was along with Stephen for the journey - and what a journey! Highly recommended.