“I only knew that when I was dying, the very last thing I heard was ‘She’s circling the drain here. In those days before my memories were coherent, I believed I had been drowned.” (pg. “In my muddied consciousness, I struggled to maintain alertness long enough to piece together clues: the warbled texture of speech, the bloat of my body, the gurgle of fluid in my lungs. I was wholly dependent on machines I understood the magnitude of catastrophe this signified.” (pg.

It was like trying to breathe with your head out the car window the force of the air made movement of breath impossible. I felt a breath delivered, without having drawn it myself, and shuddered at the sensation. Shatteringly personal, and yet wholly universal, she offers a brave road map for anyone navigating illness while presenting physicians with a new paradigm and rationale for embracing the emotional bond between doctor and patient.“I resurfaced, overtaken with a sudden fear. Awdish finds herself up against the same self-protective partitions she was trained to construct as a medical student and physician, she artfully illuminates the dysfunction of disconnection. Awdish comes to understand the fatal flaws in her profession and in her own past actions as a physician while achieving, through unflinching presence, a crystalline vision of a new and better possibility for us all.Īs Dr. Hauntingly perceptive and beautifully written, In Shock allows the reader to transform alongside Awidsh and watch what she discovers in our carefully-cultivated, yet often misguided, standard of care. At each step of the recovery process, Awdish was faced with something even more unexpected: repeated cavalier behavior from her fellow physicians-indifference following human loss, disregard for anguish and suffering, and an exacting emotional distance. Awdish spent months fighting for her life, enduring consecutive major surgeries and experiencing multiple overlapping organ failures. Rana Awdish never imagined that an emergency trip to the hospital would result in hemorrhaging nearly all of her blood volume and losing her unborn first child. A riveting first-hand account of a physician who's suddenly a dying patient, In Shock 'searches for a glimmer of hope in life's darkest moments, and finds it.' - The Washington Postĭr.

In Shock by Rana Awdish