Condition Critical - Softcover

CONDITION CRITICAL was written as a sequel to INTENSIVE CARE; The Story of a Nurse.  With INTENSIVE CARE being the story of my first ten years in nursing, including my nursing school years, CONDITION CRITICAL represented my final ten years as a critical care nurse.  In this book I take the reader from my daily life in the ER and CCU of a large city trauma center, to the time ten years later that I left nursing to brave the wilds in the jungles of the West Indies

With her trademark wit and razor-sharp sensibilities, Echo heron the critical care nurse whose New York Times bestseller, Intensive Care, gave readers an intimate view into the emotional, frustrating world behind hospital doors, now returns to Redwoods Memorial Hospital.  Set anid the chaos of code blues and hospital politics, Condition Critical is first and foremost the continuing story of a nurse: that intimate stranger who is sister, mother, confessor and healer, whose courageous and sympathetic heart sends a silent prayer every time she hears a siren.     As bootleg copies of Intensive Care  send shock waves through the staff lounge, Echo Heron tacklles the daily disorder of caring for patients in a big city melting pot. She walks that perpetual tightrope of stress, burnout, bureaucratic idiocy, and everyday annoyance caused by understaffing, difficult doctors, and pressure from the hospital administration.     Heron brings it all vividly to life: Nights spent tending victims of congestive heart failure and shooting traumas.  The haunting of room 5/6. The fears of Heron and her colleagues after being exposed to AIDS-infected blood in the heat of a lifesaving procedure. Then there are the patients themselves: the schizophrenic convict who must recover in time for his execution . . . the house painter with a broken neck, who defies the odds to walk again . . . a fellow nurse and gay male who is brutally beaten in his own apartment. . . an elderly Asian woman trying to bind herself into invisibility.  Their stories will make you laugh...and cry.     In Condition Critical, Echo Heron shines a probing light on the myriad roles of a nurse: healer, martyr, saint, superwoman (and man). She reveals the unversal truth about 'true givers'--nurses are able to do what they do because they are rich in the gifts of healing, compassion, and love.