Physical: an American checkup
(2005)

Nonfiction

eAudiobook

Provider: hoopla

Details

PUBLISHED
[United States] : Macmillan Audio : Made available through hoopla, 2005
EDITION
Unabridged
DESCRIPTION

1 online resource (1 audio file (7hr., 42 min.)) : digital

ISBN/ISSN
9781593978112 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) MWT11824017, 1593978111 (sound recording : hoopla Audio Book) 11824017
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

Read by Patrick Frederic

A wild ride through the dark heart of American health and health care, plus sex, drugs, and stem-cell wars. PHYSICAL is the story of a hard-living, happily married, middle-aged American (the author) who gets a three-day "executive checkup" at the Mayo Clinic and is thereby forced to confront his mortality, not to mention glove-wearing doctors and the pair of dominatrix-esque technicians who supervise his stress test quite strictly. James McManus must understand his revised actuarial odds in the light of his not-so-long-lived forebears and the fact that his youngest children are only six and five years old. He has to survive his own cardiovascular system, inherited habits, and genetic handicaps long enough to see Bea and Grace into adulthood. But with so much at stake, and in spite of his terror of death, he may not have the willpower to follow the Mayo clinicians' advice. On a related health front, McManus's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration's opposition to the stem-cell research that could save her life makes him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful wife sleeping with the brilliant opthalmological surgeon who saved their daughter's vision? PHYSICAL negotiates the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the stem-cell research wars. It's a no-holds-barred, wrenching, often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a privileged generation that can't believe the party's winding down, if not over

Mode of access: World Wide Web

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