- This event has passed.
April 7, 2018 @ 7:00 pm
Event Navigation
Daniela Lamas
A critical care doctor’s breathtaking stories about what it means to be saved by modern medicine
Modern medicine is a world that glimmers with new technology and cutting-edge research. To the public eye, medical stories often begin with sirens and flashing lights and culminate in survival or death. But these are only the most visible narratives. As a critical care doctor treating people at their sickest, Daniela Lamas is fascinated by a different story: what comes after for those whose lives are extended by days, months, or years as a result of our treatments and technologies?
In You Can Stop Humming Now, Lamas explores the complex answers to this question through intimate accounts of patients and their families. A grandfather whose failing heart has been replaced by a battery-operated pump; a salesman who found himself a kidney donor on social media; a college student who survived a near fatal overdose and returned home, alive but not the same; and a young woman navigating an adulthood she never thought she’d live to see — these moving narratives paint a detailed picture of the fragile border between sickness and health.
Riveting, gorgeously told, and deeply personal, You Can Stop Humming Now is a compassionate, uncompromising look at the choices and realities that many of us, and our families, may one day face.
Daniela Lamas is the real thing. Her voice is wry, compassionate, sometimes doctorly and sometimes not. And she’s written a gripping, soaring, inspiring book about the sickest people on the planet. It’s an important story, too—about not only death but also survival. Read it. You’ll see things you’ve never seen. You’ll be moved. And you’ll discover a voice you want to hear more from. —Atul Gawande
About the Author:
Daniela Lamas is a pulmonary and critical care doctor at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital and on the faculty at Harvard Medical School. Following graduation from Harvard College, she went on to earn her MD at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, where she also completed her internship and residency. She then returned to Boston for her subspecialty fellowship. She has worked as a medical reporter at the Miami Herald and is frequently published in the New York Times. This is her first book.
