Healing Hearts: A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon |  | Author: Kathy Magliato M.D.
Publisher: Crown Archetype
Category: Book
List Price: $24.00
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Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 125816
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1
ISBN: 0767930266
Dewey Decimal Number: 617.412092
EAN: 9780767930260
ASIN: 0767930266
Publication Date: January 26, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An inspiring, surprising, sometimes shocking, and ultimately deeply informative memoir of the high-stakes, high-pressured life of a female heart surgeon
Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of the few female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group—those surgeons specially trained to perform heart transplants. Healing Hearts is the story of the making of a surgeon who is also a wife and mother. Dr. Magliato takes us into her highly demanding, physically intense, male-dominated world and shows us how she masterfully works to save patients’ lives every day.
In her memoir, we come to know many of those patients whose lives Dr. Magliato has touched: a baby born with a hole in her heart, a ninety-four-year-old woman with a lethal tear in her aorta, and a thirty-five-year-old movie producer who saves her own life by recognizing the symptoms of a heart attack. Along the way, Dr. Magliato sheds light on the too often unrecognized symptoms of a heart attack and cardiovascular disease—the number one killer of women in America—and the specific measures that can be taken to prevent it.
As we begin to see what it takes for Dr. Magliato to heal hearts day after day, we come to understand a more human side of the medical profession. Dr. Magliato celebrates with her patients when they overcome their disease and personally mourns when they die as a result of it. She understands deeply the pain and suffering that heart disease can wreak on patients as well as on their families. Healing Hearts is not only her story, it is also the story of everyone affected by heart disease—roughly one in three Americans.
Dr. Magliato acquaints us with the day-to-day realities of her life and work. We see her skillfully juggle a full and happy family life as the wife of a liver transplant surgeon (they have bedside tables cluttered with pagers and cell phones that ring throughout the night) and the mother of two young boys. We also see the toll that being a female pioneer can take, as well as the rewards of such demanding work. She, like many working women, is striving to have it all.
Dr. Magliato’s powerful and moving memoir demonstrates her passion and commitment to her family, her patients, and her profession and reveals that, at the end of a long day, it’s our hearts that matter most.
Kathy E. Magliato, MD, is currently the director of women’s cardiac services at Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California, and an attending cardiothoracic surgeon at Torrance Memorial Medical Center in Torrance, California, where she is developing a women’s heart center to address the cardiac needs of female patients. She lives in Pacific Palisades with her husband and their two children.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
 "One opportunity builds upon another." February 4, 2010
E. Bukowsky (NY United States)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
"Healing Hearts" is Dr. Kathy Magliato's account of her life as one of the few female cardiothoracic surgeons in the United States. She is also a loving wife and the doting mother of two young sons. At forty-five, Magliato is an attending surgeon and the director of women's cardiac services in a California hospital. She has an MBA, which has enabled her to branch out into the business side of medicine. Her husband, Nick, is a busy liver transplant surgeon, and the two are in frequent contact every day, trying to coordinate their hectic schedules to allow for family time.
Dr. Magliato touches briefly on her childhood, during which she learned to work hard and be self-sufficient; her grueling medical training under some tough mentors; the gender prejudice and humiliation that she endured from her sexist colleagues; the special satisfaction that she derives from healing people's hearts ("an incredible honor and privilege"); the difficult balancing act of juggling her career and personal life; the need to be detached in the operating room, yet tender with patients and their families; and the anguish of letting a patient go when he cannot be saved. Magliato is on call 24/7, including weekends, and even her nights are interrupted with frequent pages and phone calls. She is chronically exhausted and wistfully states, "How I wish I could be lazy. Just once."
This is a frank, occasionally grisly, and often poignant look at how heart disease affects our lives. Anyone, from an infant to a nonagenarian, can have a heart infection, a tear in the aorta, blot clots, leaky valves and a host of other problems. A good heart surgeon should be proficient, knowledgeable, meticulous, steady, and when necessary, quick. In dire situations, every second counts and immediate decisions must be made that, if wrong, can cost a person his life. Some of the most touching passages are the ones dealing with an elderly woman's decision to reject heroic measures so that she can die peacefully, and Magliato's holding an eleven-day old baby in her arms who, unfortunately, did not make it. Not all is gloom and doom; Magliato has dinner with a former patient named Sylvester whom she treated six years earlier. Sylvester needed two mechanical hearts to stabilize him while he awaited a transplant. Eventually, he received a heart, but all did not go well. After suffering severe complications (including respiratory failure, kidney problems, convulsions, and a pulmonary embolism), he managed to pull through and resume an active life. These are situations that can pierce even a tough doctor's armor.
The author takes great pains to emphasize how high the mortality rate is for females suffering from cardiovascular disease. She advises women to meticulously monitor their blood pressure, cholesterol, triglycerides, and weight. If they experience any of the warning signs listed in the book, they should rush to the emergency room. Too many females assume that heart disease cannot strike them; nothing could be further from the truth.
Magliato has a lively and often darkly humorous writing style. Occasionally, she is too technical in her explanations, and she has an unfortunate tendency to be a bit self-congratulatory. Still, "Heart Healing" is an instructive look at the formidable day-to-day challenges that a surgeon faces, as well as a peek at the future of this branch of medicine. If someone must undergo heart surgery, he would be wise to choose a practitioner who is not only competent, but also dedicated and compassionate. One gets the impression that Magliato's patients are fortunate to be in her highly skilled hands.
A must- read February 7, 2010
Mary Alice Pardee
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
An engrossing page turner, filled with incredible details of a surgeon's daily life, mixed with the compassion of life's lessons and value and insight. Her wry sense of humor and honest self portrayl make it all so real and engaging...a tear jerker, at times, a definite 5 star!
An AMAZING book! February 14, 2010
Vic Reader (Texas)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
WHAT A GREAT BOOK! Though I'd like to write her to hopefully ask about some issues she brought up (I'm a nurse), it was SO GOOD. It honestly made me fall in love with medicine again. SO GOOD. It's a great insight into the world of cardiac surgeouns, as well as medicine, as well as heart health. LOVED it -- I'm sad it's over.
A Must-Read Memoir February 9, 2010
Sharon Steiglitz (Santa Monica, CA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
With incredible wit, compassion, perceptiveness and candor, Dr. Kathy Magliato takes the reader on a magical journey into the male-dominated world of cardiothoracic surgery. From the first time Dr. Magliato felt a heart, the impetus for her chosen career, to the final chapters, her story will touch any reader's heart. Inspirational, honest, informative, refreshing and funny, this memoir is a must-read. You will find yourself cheering for this phenomenal surgeon, wife and mother. Bravo, Dr. Magliato.
Inspiring March 11, 2010
BookBargainsandPreviews.com (New York)
This is a wonderful, inspiring book! More than a memoir, t is well-written and difficult to put down. Dr. Magliato really hits it home for working woman and the struggles that we face, balancing work and family lives. In this book she tells the stories of women, much like us all, who could have prevented heart disease. The information about heart disease in women is fascinating and worth the read itself. A must-read for women!
Showing reviews 1-5 of 18
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