Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary

doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7455.1571-a

BMJ 2004;328:1571 (26 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.328.7455.1571-a

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Excerpts from a Family Medical Dictionary

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How to write about the death of your mother? That is the burdenRebecca Brown admirably shoulders in this short and valuablememoir. Each pithy chapter is titled after a medical term, anever serious litany that charts the downward spiral of a life.

Rebecca Brown

Granta, £10, pp108 ISBN 1 86207 642 1

Rating: $*$ $*$ $*$ $*$

Brown's mother was an active soul who rarely complained, a keendriver based in New Mexico who travelled across the vast spacesof American desert to visit her beloved family on the West Coast.One time she isn't up to it, she feels tired—"her doctorhad told her she needed rest." When she gets to the right teamit turns out that she has metastatic gastric carcinoma: "Yourmother is profoundly anemic," this new doctor said. Then herepeated, "profoundly."

Neither panegyric nor horror-show freak out, Brown's reportageof the subsequent medical . . . [Full text of this article]

John Quin, consultant physician

Royal Sussex County Hospital, Brighton John.Quin@bsuh.nhs.uk