PRO CONNECT
Melissa Mullamphy is a masters level psychologist, a health care expert and advocate, and critically-acclaimed author. Beginning her working life at age fourteen, she did everything from filling grocery bags to playing in an all-girl heavy metal thrash band to selling lottery tickets. Always busy, searching for ways to improve and help others, she received her Master’s degree in counseling psychology. Working in a psychiatric emergency room, leading various non-profit events, and running group therapy sessions gave her an insider’s view of the health care system—and the failings in how it was run (not to mention the pay scale) finally turned her to the corporate world.
Working as a Domestic Operations Manager for one of Warren Buffet’s firms, she spent the next two decades traveling the country in limousines and airplanes, enjoying fine dining, and “becoming a responsible adult.” All of which came to a screeching halt when her mother was diagnosed with cancer, thrusting her back into the world of health care—on the other side of the equation.
Caring for her mother through her terminal illness, Mullamphy got an up-close view of the failings and bad practices of the medical system. She saw evil in the neglectful and incompetent people skimming along within a health care structure that preferred almost everything over the patients and witnessed heroism in good people trying their best to help in a system they knew was hopelessly broken.
After her mother’s death, Mullamphy turned her life’s experience—as a psychologist, a corporate manager, and survivor of a failed medical system—into advocacy. Mullamphy has penned hundreds of critically-lauded articles, blogs, and posts arguing for ways to improve health care systems and patient care— and blogs about the (sometimes deadly) failures of our health care systems; she highlights failures, points out successes, emerging issues, caregiver tips and advocates for change in our most critical—and critically deficient—medical procedures and organizations.
More about her, her writings, and her advocacy at http://www.melissamullamphy.com.
“An unflinching chronicle of loss that takes a hard look at the state of medical care in the United States.”
– Kirkus Reviews
A family copes with a cancer diagnosis and the unforeseen challenges of the U.S. health care system in this debut memoir.
Mullamphys’ mother, Constance E. Burns, was “a fighter from the very beginning,” according to the author. She was born in New York state in 1942, weighing only two pounds, but managed to survive. She was the sole daughter in a family with four brothers; the author characterizes her as a giving woman and a well-liked restaurant server who worked very hard, but who also had an aversion to going to the doctor. When she finally did, after falling ill in 2010, physicians discovered that she had a 15-pound tumor on her ovary; she was soon diagnosed with ovarian cancer, along with other ailments, including a hiatal hernia, gastritis, and hemorrhoids. Mullamphy documents her mother’s numerous appointments over the course of eight months, which included chemotherapy sessions and surgeries before she died in December 2010. At the end of each chapter is a “Things We Learned” recap, which includes such insights as “Get to know the nurses on the floor,” which the family learned in May, and that “having a better schedule and consistency in staff would have made [hospice] easier,” which they discovered in the final month of Constance’s life.
Over the course of this book, the descriptions of the author’s mother’s worsening symptoms are chilling, but the most disturbing parts are those that recount the family’s struggles with the health care system. In one case, for instance, Mullamphy writes that she suspected that her mother, who suffered from constant, severe nausea, had been poisoned by excessive chemotherapy, which an oncologist later confirmed. What sets the author’s work apart from other memoirs of grief, however, are her expressions of anger a decade since her mother’s passing, and how accessible she makes these emotions to the reader. She tells of doggedly pursuing answers while dealing with seemingly apathetic doctors, and her layman’s translations of medical jargon even offer occasional lighter moments: “What the hell is platelet apheresis? It is a big machine similar to dialysis…like a rinse cycle, but it removes extra junk that can kill you instead of cleaning clothes.” The author writes that she worked on this book for a decade as a promise to her mother, expressed in the title. In it, she’s candid about the ugly parts of her own grieving process, including accounts of her worsening performance at a corporate reinsurance company, and the seizures she endured, in part, as the result of stress; she was eventually diagnosed with a neurocognitive disorder in 2013. Mullamphy’s impressions of her mother’s medical care oscillate throughout the work, but may be summed up with the dictum that one shouldn’t blindly trust medical staff “because human error happens.” She also effectively stresses how important it is “to watch over your loved ones and advocate for them when they cannot or won’t.”
An unflinching chronicle of loss that takes a hard look at the state of medical care in the United States.
Pub Date: Dec. 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-73480-262-7
Page count: 124pp
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2022
Short Video
Day job
Mom, Wife, Author, MA in Counseling Psychology, Patient Advocate, Disrupter, Influencer
Favorite author
Mark Manson
Favorite book
The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A F*Ck: A Counterintuitive Approach To Living A Good Life
Favorite word
accountability
Hometown
Brewster, NY
Passion in life
Helping others find their voice and patient advocacy
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.