All posts tagged: physician

A powerful and harrowing story of homeless youth, a dysfunctional family of origin, mental illness, & success of physician Sheryl Recinos in HINDSIGHT, plus a timely and topical reading list, activism, more

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By Leslie Lindsay  A powerful and almost unbelievably true account of one woman’s dysfunctional family, her experiences in detention, foster care, the streets of Hollywood, and how she made it through. ~MEMOIR MONDAY|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ HINDSIGHT (2018) by Sheryl Recinos, is one of those stories that will absolutely stay with you. Sheryl is a your typical eight-year old when her mother has a psychotic break. Along with her next-closest-in-age brother, she takes them to a trailer home to stay warm, leaving them with nothing but uncooked pasta and raisins. And then she vanishes, but returns. The family struggles. Eventually, the parents divorce, but the father receives custody. When Sheryl is eleven, he remarries a woman who wants nothing to do with kids, who struggles with her own mental health issues. To summarize this harrowing story in a succinct manner almost discredits the author’s pain and struggles. Here, we delve into a deeply dysfunctional family of origin, involving children sent away to foster care, the ones that remain, and the frank abuse that follows. HINDSIGHT …

Sharp, stunning, and surreal story of an isolated physician on the outskirts of town in which he must bring life back to the dead; morals and medicine and miracles in Vikram Paralkar’s NIGHT THEATER

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By Leslie Lindsay  A surgeon in a remote clinic must bring the dead back to life by dawn in this fantastic, wholly unique read filled with existential angst, magical realism. ~WEDNESDAYS WITH WRITERS|ALWAYS WITH A BOOK~ Set in rural India, NIGHT THEATER (Jan 14, 2020 Catapult) is such an exquisite read unlike anything I’ve read before. Vikram Paralkar was born and raised in Mumbai and now resides in Pennsylvania as a physician-scientist and his expertise absolutely shines. A bitter surgeon flees from his former job as a coroner/pathologist to a small village clinic where the conditions are poor–he’s constantly cleaning and sterilizing, squashing roaches, and buying supplies out of pocket. He has a little help–a woman he calls a ‘pharmacist,’ but her credentials are questionable and she serves many roles: nurse, confidant, clinic manager, assistant. One night, a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their 8-year old son appear at the clinic as the surgeon is finalizing some paperwork. They were killed in a violent robbery, but tell the surgeon they have been offered another chance, ‘sent …