Reviews tagging 'Cancer'

Working Stiff: Two Years, 262 Bodies, and the Making of a Medical Examiner by Judy Melinek

3 reviews

vigil's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional hopeful informative reflective sad tense fast-paced

4.5

extremely thorough and informative. it’s a great entrance into the world of forensic pathology for people who wish to enter the medical field (like me), or for anyone just plain interested. 

it’s definitely not for the lighthearted, Melinek described her work in visceral detail thar truly conveys exactly what had occurred.

i docked half a point off due to the author’s treatment of suicide. her own father killed himself when she was thirteen, which understandably colored her perception of it. but her low empathy or compassion for the suicidal, ranging from calling them delusional to downright selfish is ugly in a regular person, but willfully ignorant and harmful in a medical professional.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Suicide, Abortion, Addiction, Alcohol, Alcoholism, Blood, Body horror, Cancer, Car accident, Child death, Child abuse, Classism, Death, Death of parent, Drug abuse, Drug use, Domestic abuse, Excrement, Fire/Fire injury, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Injury/Injury detail, Medical content, Medical trauma, Murder, Physical abuse, Pregnancy, Schizophrenia/Psychosis , Self harm, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, Violence, and Vomit

eatingbrains's review

challenging dark informative reflective sad fast-paced

3.75

This book makes me wonder about all the medical examiners that have had to deal with determining covid related deaths and how much they've had to endure during the pandemic.  Overall, it was a bit gruesome but I was fascinated.  If you like crime/medical dramas you'd probably enjoy this book.

Also, I'm a total nerd so when they used an SEM to look at the ends of a suture to determine if it was tied off properly I was stoked since I've used them to look at tiny shit.  It's fucking cool!

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Content Warnings

Minor: Medical content, Child death, Gore, Terminal illness, Gun violence, Pregnancy, Alcoholism, Blood, Cancer, Car accident, Chronic illness, Death, Drug abuse, Fire/Fire injury, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Medical trauma, Murder, Rape, Self harm, and Stalking

jess_the_reader's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

4.0

Definitely a dark subject, so make sure you’re in the right headspace for a book about death, including suicide, terrorist attacks, child death, drug use, rape, and graphic descriptions of physical attacks (usually ending in death), and what happens to bodies after death. 
If you’re up for all that, I’d highly recommend this book. I couldn’t put it down, I stayed up till 2AM last night reading this, and was fascinated. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Cancer, Car accident, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Death of parent, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Drug use, Gore, Grief, Gun violence, Medical content, Miscarriage, Murder, Physical abuse, Rape, Self harm, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Suicidal thoughts, Suicide, Suicide attempt, Terminal illness, and Violence