Product Description

Why do some people find and sustain hope during difficult circumstances, while others do not? What can we learn from those who do, and how is their example applicable to our own lives? The Anatomy of Hope is a journey of inspiring discovery, spanning some thirty years of Dr. Jerome Groopman’s practice, during which he encountered many extraordinary people and sought to answer these questions.

This profound exploration begins when Groopman was a medical student, ignorant of the vital role of hope in patients’ lives–and it culminates in his remarkable quest to delineate a biology of hope. With appreciation for the human elements and the science, Groopman explains how to distinguish true hope from false hope–and how to gain an honest understanding of the reach and limits of this essential emotion.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21908 in Books
• Published on: 2005-01-11
• Released on: 2005-01-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

Customer Reviews

The Anatomy of Hope:How Patients Prevail in the Face of Illness
I devoured this book of pure inspiration while recovering from my second cancer diagnosis with a 17-month period. As soon as I finished reading it, I wrote to my several oncologists, at three hospitals on 2 continents, to recommed that it be placed in every oncology waiting area and every chemotherapy unit for patients and health professionals alike. Jerome Gropman, M.D. descibes his evolution as a a physican, from his years of training in its illness-detective work and business of interventions to becoming a compassionate, humanistic doctor who is capable of seeing whole lives in his patients. Always and everywhere, in every one, every day, searching for hope: in the body, mind and if there be one, soul or spirit of an individual.

Groopman quotes, "Beware how you take hope away from another human being." Oliver Wendell Holmes, 19th century Boston physician, poet and essayist.

Mainly, this book tells stories of Groopman's extraordianry patients, who, "led ...on a journey of discovery from a point where hope was absent to a place where hope could not be lost. ....learned the difference between true hope and false hope....Because when they held onto hope even when I could not, they survived. nNd one woman of deep faith showed me that even when there is no hope for the body, there is always hope for the soul. Each person helped me see another dimension of the anatomy of hope." from the Introduction

A must for any professional in the field of oncology
An excellent account of an oncologist's own experience,during his multiple years of training and practice, with a description of actual cases and how the different outcomes of these cases changed the author's approach and understanding of patients with serious and terminal illnesses -mostly cancer-.
This book is the product of the author's emotional journey through understanding how differently patients react to their own diagnoses and circumstances, and why physicians have to treat patients individually, and not as cases of this type or another type of cancer.
It is clear from the stories, that he realized that many patients do not want to hear about statistics, they don't want to know their possibility of survival in 5 years or 10 years in percentages, because all human beings hold on fast to hope, and this is what makes them survive in some incredible cases.
As a physician myself, I recommend this book to all medical students, all students of oncology, and professonals in the field. Please, don't forget that the last thing that a patient loses is hope, and in a background of truthfullness, try to help them hold onto this last resource, which may benefit their immune systems in the struggle against the disease.

Excellent book!
Ever since I read this book, I've been recommending it to everyone I know: other cancer patients, my oncologist, the administrator at our local cancer clinic. As a highly respected physician and medical researcher, Groopman is well placed to make the argument he makes here: that a very important part of a doctor's job is to give his/her patients hope--not false hopes grounded in pop psychology, but hope based on medical research. And as someone who once found himself in the patient's shoes, he is also in the perfect position to give hope to others like himself.

Structured around well-told stories (not, as one reviewer put it, "Just a bunch of anekdotes (sic)") of actual patients, the book is very readable--and also very informative. It's "must" reading for any physician or medical student interested in the art and science of healing.