Publisher's Synopsis
This Combined Edition contains MEDICAL GRAIL & HOW TO BE A PATIENT AND LIVE TO TELL THE TALE! A Survival Guide for Today's Modern Medical Maze. MEDICAL GRAIL is the story of Robert Bascom, a young, idealistic physician who retreats to a small mountain top village in Italy to mourn the death of his wife. While drinking wine in his cottage, the administrator of a small hospital in the Arizona desert calls and begs him to come to Whitney to clean up the corruption, incompetence and malpractice that are rampant in his facility. Bascom reluctantly agrees, and on his first night in town, gets an urgent call from a nurse in the hospital ER. "He's bleeding to death," she says. "I need your help." "Don't you have a doctor on duty?" Bascom wonders. "Dr. Perkins is busy. Please come!" Once in the ER, Bascom sees a physician reading a newspaper at the nurses station. In the ward are two patients: one is asleep on a stretcher in the corner of the room, the other, a Mexican as white as the sheet covering him, is being worked on by a nurse and an EMT in a bloody uniform. Bascom goes to the stretcher, rubs the back of his hand over then man's dry cheek and asks the nurse, "Did you ask Dr. Perkins to help with this patient?" "Yes," she replies, "but he won't treat Mexicans." MEDICAL GRAIL, a fictional story based upon true events, is the tale of a doctor who has traveled with his patients through the maze of modern medicine. HOW TO BE A PATIENT AND LIVE TO TELL THE TALE! A Survival Guide for Today's Modern Medical Maze will teach you how to avoid dangerous medications and therapies, unwarranted laboratory tests, unnecessary hospitalizations, and unessential and possibly dangerous surgical and medical procedures. It will also show you how to intelligently discuss a health problem with your physician, how to participate actively and knowledgeably in the diagnostic decision-making, and how to confidently refuse to undergo a suggested therapeutic regimen based upon your current knowledge of medicine. Whether you have traditional fee for service, managed care, or no insurance at all, this book will teach you how to protect your health and health dollars.
