Healing Hearts

A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon

By: Kathy Magliato

Narrated by: Renée Raudman

Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of fewer than a dozen female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group - those surgeons who perform heart transplants. Healing Hearts is the story of the making of a surgeon who also calls herself a wife and mother.

Dr. Magliato takes us into her highly demanding, physically intense, male-dominated world and shows us how she masterfully works to save patients' lives every day. In her memoir, we come to know many of those patients whose lives Dr. Magliato has touched: a baby born with a hole in her heart, a 94-year-old woman with heart failure, and a 35-year-old movie producer who saves her own life by recognizing the symptoms of a heart attack.

Along the way, Dr. Magliato sheds light on the rarely recognized symptoms of heart attack and cardiovascular disease - the number-one killer of women in America - and the specific measures that can be taken to prevent it.

By taking us deep into her life and those of her patients, Dr. Magliato acquaints us with the day-to-day realities of her life and work. We see her frantically juggle a full and happy family life as the wife of a liver transplant surgeon (they each have bedside tables cluttered with pagers and cell-phones) and the mother of two young boys. We also see the toll that being a female pioneer can take, as well as the rewards of such demanding work.

Dr. Magliato's powerful and moving memoir demonstrates her love, passion, and commitment toward both her work and her family and reveals that, at the end of a long day, it's the heart that matters most.

©2010 Kathy E. Magliato (P)2010 Tantor

Critic reviews

"[For Magliato] it’s not about money but “the thrill of touching the human heart” while balancing her professional life sans 'jacket' and her personal roles as wife and mother, never easily but with hectic good humor, authentic caring, and in this book, fast-paced, smooth writing that never bores." ( Booklist)

An look into the heart

This is a well written book! You get to know the author as a person, not just as a surgeon. There is a good mix of medicine as well as statistics, her obvious focus is women's heart disease - and that's good! I would recommend for anyone who is interested in surgery or CT to read/listen to this. You too can have not only a successful career, but also a happy family.

Overall, a very good book

I really enjoyed this book. There were a lot of great stories about the author's life as a heart surgeon. It sounded like a very rewarding career most of the time. I enjoyed her sense of humor as well, it livened up the serious nature of heart surgery. What really turned me off, in Chapter 16, was her discussion on how demand for her services had declined because less invasive interventions were becoming available. She said  "There is always heart disease in women to fall back on." She followed that statement with a comment that she didn't wish for disease in order to stay in business. I quite disagree and think she was very clear in her desire and there is nothing to misunderstand.  I felt she was saying she did want to stay in business even if it meant people were gravely ill. She has a lifestyle to maintain. All these years I have defended physicians,  saying they would surely be glad to need to go into another field because it meant people were healthy or, in this case, able to find treatment in less invasive ways. How wrong I was. Then the author goes on to distract the reader from the horrific nature of what she just said by bringing up the dysfunctional healthcare system.  On that topic, she sides with hospital's exorbitant prices. As far as the price the hospital charges being the price insurance companies pay, it's more like that is the contracted dollar amount that the hospital knows it will never see. So, no, this is not why hospitals turn away the uninsured. They do that to keep from dipping into the padded pockets of the CEO and other overpaid administration. I am glad the author pursued an MBA because she did need to evolve. Rather than complain that one's field is changing for the safety of patients, find a way to fit in.

She is clearly a strong woman to have survived the Male-dominated cardiac surgery specialty despite the harassment she had been through. And kudos to her on breastfeeding so long while being a surgeon. She made pumping breastmilk a priority, setting a fine example of what other mothers can do if they set their minds to it. She didn't have ideal conditions to pump in either, but she found a way, just like with everything else. That would be the takeaway from this book,  that a person can set their mind to achieve something and work their ass off to get there. Be it cardiac surgeon, auto mechanic or stay at home mom. Work hard and be the best you can at what you do.

Overall, a very good book

Healing Hearts

The book is a memoir of one of the first female heart transplant surgeons and the first female mechanical heart surgeon. The book covers her early life, medical school and the years and years of surgical residency. The later part of the book goes in to life as a married surgeon with children who is also married to a transplant surgeon. She is trying to balance a demanding career, and being a wife and mother. The book also tries to educate women about heart disease given risk factor and so and also trying to explain that the symptoms of heart attack in women is different than men. She also covers the problems women still have in going into certain occupations. Renee Raudman does a good job narrating the story.

plenty of ticker

drama in the theater and out; with woman doctor as strong woman character, and it did get me thinking about heart muscle more.

This is a must read for all women.

I learned so much from this book. It was informative, interesting, and beautifully narrated. A must read for all women.

Mostly fascinating

Very well-written and excellent on the technical aspects of things, and I enjoyed all the blurbs about medical history and descriptions of the various cardiology "rock stars". Additionally, I thought the writing encompassed many levels of experience - not just the medical/surgical, and work experience in a hospital, but also aspects of home, family and spirituality.

The only negative for me was the way the author kept using the word "operation" instead of "surgery". The word has pretty much come into disuse in my vocabulary and I've come to think of it as condescending, as though talking to a young child. However, the techno-speak and the medical acronyms more than made up for this small flaw! Love the term for angioplasty: "laying pipe". Priceless!

Excellent

Enjoyed the book thoughouly. Learned a lot too. Thanks so much!! Sounds like a family to look up to.

Fantastic book by a passionate and inspiring author!

I am not sure how you found time to write this but I am so glad you did! Fantastic!

Worst book I have ever read.

This book should have been interesting to me. I am a nurse and I like medical stories. But it was so poorly written that it failed to engage me at all. I did not get the sense that the physician really cared about the patients. It was a disappointment in every way. There is nothing poetic about the writing.