Audiobook8 hours
Last Night in the OR: A Transplant Surgeon's Odyssey
Written by Bud Shaw
Narrated by Jonathan Yen
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
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About this audiobook
The 1980s marked a revolution in the field of organ transplants, and Bud Shaw, MD, who studied under Tom Starzl in Pittsburgh, was on the front lines. Now retired from active practice, Dr. Shaw relays gripping moments of anguish and elation, frustration and reward, despair and hope in his struggle to save patients.
He reveals harshly intimate moments of his medical career: telling a patient's husband that his wife has died during surgery; struggling to complete a twenty-hour operation as mental and physical exhaustion inch closer and closer; and flying to retrieve a donor organ while the patient waits in the operating room. Within these more emotionally charged vignettes are quieter ones, too, like growing up in rural Ohio, and being awakened late at night by footsteps in the hall as his father, also a surgeon, slipped out of the house to attend to a patient in the ER.
He reveals harshly intimate moments of his medical career: telling a patient's husband that his wife has died during surgery; struggling to complete a twenty-hour operation as mental and physical exhaustion inch closer and closer; and flying to retrieve a donor organ while the patient waits in the operating room. Within these more emotionally charged vignettes are quieter ones, too, like growing up in rural Ohio, and being awakened late at night by footsteps in the hall as his father, also a surgeon, slipped out of the house to attend to a patient in the ER.
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Reviews for Last Night in the OR
Rating: 3.8958333166666663 out of 5 stars
4/5
24 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I lived in Pittsburgh in the late 1980s-early 1990s and I remember Starzl's name though I'm not sure I really knew much about him back then. I think Dr. Shaw was gone from Pittsburgh by the time I was there, or at least I never remember hearing his name while I was there. I recognized some of the locations Dr. Shaw mentioned during his time in Pittsburgh and that made me remember some nice memories.I found the book interesting but probably not one I would read again (so not a 5 star rating). I enjoyed learning about the early days of liver transplant surgeries and realizing how far the field has come.I'm not quite sure I fully understood the title--there really wasn't a scene I remember that Dr. Shaw said was "his last surgery case" or his last time in the OR.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5An untraditional memoir of a transplant surgeon's life, flitting back and forth from past to present. His accounts are muddied with his abusive father, his unsuccessful relationships, and long, long bouts of not sleeping due to retrieving and implanting transplanted organs. I never knew so much blood could be used in this procedure. I enjoyed the informality and casualness of the author's voice. Each chapter would stand alone. Good reading for a trip.