A History of the Present Illness: Stories

By Louise Aronson

A busy doctor juggles an errant teenage daughter and a seriously ill father. An elderly immigrant sacrifices his demented wife's well-being to satisfy his son's authority. A trainee becomes delirious with lack of sleep but must learn how to act, and not react, in the face of suffering. A psychiatrist who advocates for the underserved may herself be crazy.

Together these deeply humane linked stories - at once funny and honest, incisive and compassionate - explore the impact of illness on real people's lives and offer a portrait of health and medicine like nothing we have read before.

Set in hospitals, offices, nursing homes, prisons, family apartments and out and about in the city, A History of the Present Illness creates a world pulsating with life and introduces a striking new literary voice.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Jan 22, 2013
• ISBN: 9781408832158

Louise Aronson

Louise Aronson has an MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and an MD from Harvard Medical School. She has won the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium short fiction award and has received three Pushcart nominations. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California where she cares for diverse, frail older patients and directs the Pathways to Discovery Program, the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco.

Reviews for A History of the Present Illness

[ninelarks-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Had to read this for med school, but they only gave us an excerpt (about 30 pages). But I found it interesting and fascinating enough to want to finish reading it. Which... goodness, hopefully I'll have the time to do. I'm still in the middle of Anna Karenina anyway.

So I marked it down as "want to read" but gave it a review for the portion I've already read. I'll see if I can pick it up at the library or something.

It's an interesting take on the medical world through the eyes of a woman. Stereotypes and dating and the difficulty of keeping one's optimism and balancing life with career. How to excell in work without sacrificing life. I have the subtle feeling that a lot of this book might apply to me in the future

I can't exactly review the book because 30 pages is just not enough to get a sense of how the whole book flows together, how the ending will look. But I can tell that her writing style is sharp and snappish, truthful but still ironic as she goes through her life experiences. I like the way she writes. It's a mix of inner thoughts and detailed descriptions with interspersed dialogue that highlights her observations of people or her decisions.

I'll hopefully be returning to this and writing a more complete review.

[bookishjojo · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

this author makes me so jealous/envious -- harvard MD. AND MFA. AND she lives in san francisco!? AND is generally awesome and wins writing prizes!? *sigh*Louise Aronson has an MFA from Warren Wilson College and an MD from Harvard. She has received the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium short fiction award, and three Pushcart nominations. Her fiction has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review and the Literary Review, among other publications. She is an associate professor of medicine at UCSF, where she cares for older patients and directs the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco.i am feeling professionally inadequate! :)this book really resonated with me -- though i found it hard at moments to separate the fiction from the fact - wondering often what was real and what was made-up? the style of the telling very much lends itself to just hearing a doctor speak about cases/people she has known.this collection of short stories is really wonderful. Aronson writes in a way that complex emotions and ideas are addressed via memorable characters and tight prose.

[beamis12 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

What a fantastic journey through the medical facilities and nursing homes of San Francisco. Immigrants, the doctors themselves, psychiatrists, their families and wives are all represented in these incredible, relatedstories. The characters are everyday people, the prose is very readable and they are all very pertinent in today's medical trials and travails. Enjoyed these short stories very much. ARC from NetGalley.

[shelleyraec · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

“In medicine, the ‘history of the present illness’, or HPI, is the critical first portion of the medical note that describes the onset, duration, character, context, and severity of the illness. Basically, it’s the story, and without it, you can’t understand what’s going on with your patient.”A History of the Present Illness is an extraordinary collection of peripherally linked vignettes that explore the current practice and experience of health care in America.Insightful, honest and compassionate, Aronson, an accomplished practicing physician overlays truth with fiction to illustrate the plight of her colleagues, patients and families as they navigate bureaucracy and illness. Clinical objectivity blurs with humane compassion, triumph with heartbreak in stories of complex, emotional and medical crisis.There are sixteen stories that cross the boundaries of race, age and gender. Each give a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people within the health care system. Patients like Rodney Brown whose leg aches even though he left it in the desert sand of Afghanistan (After) and doctors like Robert who witness the obscenity of slow death and and are expected to do nothing (Giving Good Death). I found 'An Amercian Problem' almost unbearably sad, it is an indictment of a society who has relinquished the care of its most vulnerable members in favour of balancing the budget, and 'Soup or Sex?' an incredibly touching portrait of a young man fighting with uncommon bravery to be more than his disease. All of the anecdotes are affecting however, inspiring hope and admiration as often as anger and disgust.A History of The Present Illness is a remarkable read, quietly attesting to the triumphs and failures of the American health care system. Forget what you think you know of medicine from watching Grey's Anatomy or General Hospital. In real life, caring for people is much messier than either show can portray.Just a note: There was a problem with the formatting of my Kindle ARC edition that I hope is not present in the finished version. Aside from broken sentences, there were no clear separators between the stories and I was thrown a number of times by suddenly finding myself in the midst of a new story. The formatting issues also made 'Blurred Boundary Disorder' particularly difficult to read.