"What’s wrong with me?"
That’s a common question when your head hurts, your stomach loop-de-loops, your tongue’s disorganized and you present yourself at the hospital. You need to know what’s wrong so you can feel all right again, and your doctor may have the answer. But as you’ll see in the new book, Cook County ICU by Cory Franklin, M.D., it might take some sleuthing.
As the son of an attending physician at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, Cory Franklin grew up with a comfortable familiarity for the facility. It was natural, then, that he would become a physician at that hospital’s ICU once he became a doctor himself – but first, Franklin worked at and learned at other hospitals around the country, and he collected stories.
Every doctor, it seems, gets a share of unusual cases, and since becoming a doctor in the late 1970s Franklin’s no exception. He was on the ICU team when the "first reported case of iodine toxicity from topical absorption" was found. He once declared a patient dead, only to learn moments later that the ECG machine was broken.
He keenly recalls the gang leader he cared for, and how the swaggering twenty-something man was really a little boy, down deep. "Stories of life and death make for a constant source of drama," Franklin says, and he has those, too: he writes of poisons ingested and suicides thwarted, Munchausen’s Syndrome cases solved and kings, princesses and dukes in Cook County.
Oh, and Elvis is definitely dead.
Medicine is usually a serious thing to practice, though there’s humor in many situations. Franklin writes of hospital hi-jinks, pre-internet practical jokes and things that make ER staff laugh. He once kept a very old secret for a very elderly war veteran, and he explains what happens when everyday items are found where they shouldn’t be.
And having cared for the famous and not-so-famous, Franklin says, "Some … names and their stories still resonate decades later."
He writes about his first AIDS patients and a toothless laborer he’ll "never forget." And he knows how ethics can be tested when a patient is a killer.
Why do we feel so not-ourselves when we go to a hospital? Why shouldn’t you schedule elective surgery in mid-November?
Author Cory Franklin, knows why – and his explanations are only a tiny bit of what you’ll read inside Cook County ICU.
Never stuffy and only just a little squirmy, Franklin takes readers on an interesting case-walk around one Chicago hospital, from the ssshhhhhhh of the automatic doors to the dimly-lit morgue, focusing on the ER and ICU.
On this tour, we get a peek at some of the most notable patients and illnesses Frank-lin and his colleagues have tackled, we see medical mystery-solving in action and we get advice. I loved that.
For readers who enjoy true-medicine stories, this is one of those reward-yourself kinds of books filled with anecdotes you’ll eat up.
It’s compelling, comic and constantly addicting – so, for you, missing Cook County ICU would be very wrong.
Terri Schlichenmeyer has been reading since she was three years old and never goes anywhere without a book. She lives on a hill in Wisconsin with two dogs and 11,000 books. Readers with questions or comments may write to Terri in care of this publication.
