Pamela Nagami, M.D.

An authority on infectious diseases discusses the various patients she has encountered and treated, sharing her experiences making medical and ethical decisions that can mean the difference between life and death.

And Other True Stories of Infectious Disease

The Woman with a Worm in Her Head

Most of us think nothing of that salad for lunch, that insect bite, that swim in the sea; yet these all bring human beings into contact with dangerous, even deadly microorganisms. In Maneater, Nagami discusses the shocking and amazing cases of bacterial and viral infections she has encountered in her career as an infectious disease specialist. Through personal accounts, she reveals the facts about some of the deadliest diseases: the warning signs, treatments, and most compellingly, what it feels like to make the medical and ethical decisions that can mean the difference between life and death.

And Other True Stories of a Life in Infectious Diseases

Maneater

We've all been bitten. And we all have stories. The bite attacks featured in this dramatic book take place in big cities, small towns, and remote villages around the world and throughout history. Some are as familiar and contemporary as encounters with mosquitoes in New York City and snakes in southern California's Hollywood Hills or as exotic and foreign as the tsetse in equatorial Africa, the camel in Riyadh, and the Komodo dragon in Indonesia. While others, such as people biting other people---well, these are in a category of their own. Among the startling stories and fascinating facts in Bitten. o A six-year-old girl descends into weeks of extreme lassitude until a surgeon plucks an engorged tick from her scalp. o A diabetic living in the West Indies awakes one morning to a rat eating his left great and second toes. o A twenty-eight-year-old man loses a third of his nose to a bite by his wife. o In San Francisco, after a penile bite, a man develops "flesh-eating strep," which spreads to his lower abdomen. o Severe bites by rabid animals to the face and digits, because of their rich nerve supply, are the most likely to lead to rabies and have the shortest incubation periods. o Following the bite of a seal or contact with its tissues, sealers develop such agonizing pain and swelling in their bites that, far from medical care, they sometimes amputate their own fingers. o Perhaps the most devastating human bite wound injuries are those involving the nose; doctors in Boroko near Papua, New Guinea, reported a series of ninety-five human bites treated in the Division of Surgery from 1986 to 1992---twelve were to the nose, nine in women, and three in men, and in most of the cases, the biter was an angry spouse. With reports from medical journals, case histories, colleagues, and from her own twenty-eight-year career as a practicing physician and infectious diseases specialist, Pamela Nagami's Bitten offers readers intrigued by human infection and disease and mesmerized by creatures in p0the wild a compulsively readable narrative that is entertaining, sometimes disgusting, and always enjoyable.

True Medical Stories of Bites and Stings

Bitten

A normal, healthy woman becomes host to a pork tapeworm that is burrowing into her brain and disabling her motor abilities. A handsome man contracts Chicken Pox and ends up looking like the victim of a third degree burn. A vigorous young athlete is bitten by an insect and becomes a target for flesh-eating strep. Even the most innocuous everyday activities such as eating a salad for lunch, getting bitten by an insect, and swimming in the sea bring human beings into contact with dangerous, often deadly microorganisms. In The Woman with a Worm in Her Head, Dr. Pamela Nagami reveals-through real-life cases-the sobering facts about some of the world's most horrific diseases: the warning signs, the consequences, treatments, and most compellingly, what it feels like to make medical and ethical decisions that can mean the difference between life and death. Unfailingly precise, calmly instructive, and absolutely engrossing, The Woman with the Worm in Her Head offers both useful information and enjoyable reading.

Pamela Nagami, M.D.

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