GREAT SAVES AND TERRIBLE LOSSES: The Journeys of a Surgeon

A veteran surgeon looks back on his seven decades in medicine, with insights into how the healthcare system has changed, as well as how he has changed, including in his eighth decade learning to live with the diagnosis of mild Alzheimer’s disease

From the age of eleven in 1951, Anthony Goodman, MD, knew he wanted to be a doctor—specifically, a surgeon. He never wavered from his calling, even as he worked his way through challenging medical school and residency programs. After almost three decades in a thriving surgical practice, realizing how much he and medicine had changed, he took off in a new direction, to focus on teaching the next generation of doctors. Now in his eighties, Dr. Goodman is dedicated to raising awareness of how the practice of medicine has dramatically changed from the 20th century while also making the most of his life, with renewed purpose, after an unexpected diagnosis of mild Alzheimer’s disease.

In GREAT SAVES AND TERRIBLE LOSSES: The Journeys of a Surgeon Dr. Goodman recounts memorable events from his career as a surgeon from 1967 to 1993, before miracles such as CAT scans, MRIs, and minimally invasive surgery. This riveting memoir follows Dr. Goodman through a career that took him around the world, through his retirement from the practice of surgery and into his second career as a professor and author. He reveals his approach to coping with his mild Alzheimer’s diagnosis, as not only a patient but now as a well-educated MD with a steep curve learning about the ever-changing nature of this disease, its impact as well as pathology, and options for management.

Fans of TV dramas such as The Pitt and The Resident will be gripped by Dr. Goodman’s accounts of grueling and daunting surgical procedures. These include stanching the bleeding of a woman who had sustained more than thirty stab wounds at the hands of her husband, during an assault Dr. Goodman witnessed in the dimly lit tunnel beneath Boston City Hospital on his way to work, to successfully removing a steel antenna, from a car radio, lodged through the eye and into the brain of a seven-year-old girl.

Between describing harrowing moments in the ER and OR, Dr. Goodman captures what it was like to be a young doctor during his heyday. Along with acknowledging radical improvements in diagnostic tools and surgical technologies over the decades, he sheds light on how the medical system continues to undermine doctors and all healthcare providers, prioritizing corporate profits over patient care.

Dr. Goodman discusses:

· How, in the 1980s and ’90s, an emphasis on following the efficiency protocols of hospital administrators and avoiding malpractice lawsuits led to alienating and separating doctors from the very people they were trying to heal—and what today’s doctors can do to restore the trust of their patients and protect their own capacity to feel compassion for the suffering of others.

· How standard medical school and residency practices—from requiring grueling work schedules, with little time off to get adequate sleep let alone spend time with family, and teaching through humiliation—can do significant harm to future doctors, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Unfortunately, this is a practice that continues today well into the 21st century.

· The value of treating the whole patient—body, mind, and spirit—and exploring ways to include traditional medicine, partly based on Dr. Goodman’s experience working for the US Public Health Service at the Navajo Nation Indian Reservation.

· The real threats to the very lives of doctors and all healthcare providers during the late 20th century from contact with a new breed of emerging deadly viruses, including hepatitis, Ebola, AIDS, and most recently, COVID-19—and what the healthcare system can do to educate and empower the public on how to protect themselves without escalating fears.

In addition, Dr. Goodman, along with his wife, talks about his personal experience with mild Alzheimer’s disease—from the shock of receiving the dreaded diagnosis to his everyday coping strategies, care and drug regimen with a respected specialist, and hope for living out his life with meaning and joy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ANTHONY A. GOODMAN, MD, FACS, graduated from Harvard, earned his medical degree from Cornell Medical College, and trained as a surgical intern and resident at the University of Michigan Medical Center in Ann Arbor. He completed his surgical training and served as chief resident at the Harvard Surgical Service of Boston City Hospital, New England Deaconess Hospital, the Lahey Clinic, and Cambridge Hospital. For twenty years, he worked as a general surgeon in South Florida and served as a clinical associate professor of surgery at the University of Miami School of Medicine. In addition, he served as a surgeon with the US Army Medical Corps during the Vietnam War and on Project HOPE’s hospital ship in Jamaica. He was also a visiting professor of surgery at the Christchurch Clinical School of Medicine in New Zealand, an adjunct professor of medicine in the WWAMI Medical Sciences Program of Montana State University, an affiliate professor in the Department of Biological Structure at the University of Washington School of Medicine, and a lecturer for the Great Courses. His previous books include None but the Brave: A Novel of the Surgeons of World War II, The Shadow of God: A Novel of War and Faith, and Never Say Die: A Doctor and Patient Talk about Breast Cancer.