Heart and Soul

How does a young boy, growing up in rural Nebraska, decide to become a cardiologist? What drew him and kept him on his journey to practice medicine at a young age, encounter death, and deal with professors--and later patients--who are, each of them, characters, whether challenging or easy to enjoy? How does the sensitive boy react as a physician when things go wrong or family and work lives seem to be in conflict? Too, this doctor is a man of faith; both the scientifically and the spiritually committed will wonder how he squares these worlds. How does it feel to give bad news--sometimes to a patient you have cared for over decades, when "caring" is no euphemism? This physician-author shares his deepest responses to his complex life, whose high stakes each of us shares, as he looks back at his life in this second collection of narrative poems that resonate with health care workers and lay persons alike.