Counting Backwards

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A moving exploration of the most common but most mysterious procedure in medicine.For many of the 40 million Americans who undergo anesthesia each year, it is the source of great fear and fascination. In Counting Backwards, Dr. Henry Jay Przybylo—an anesthesiologist with more than thirty years of experience—has written an unforgettable account of the routine procedure's daily dramas and fundamental mysteries. Przybylo has administered anesthesia more than 30,000 times in his career—erasing consciousness, denying memory, and immobilizing the body before reversing all of these effects—on newborn babies, screaming toddlers and sullen teenagers, his own son, and even a gorilla. With compassion and candor, he weaves his experiences into intimate stories that explore the nature of consciousness, the politics of pain relief, and the wonder of modern medicine.Through its intense and humane tales of mistakes, near-disasters, life-saving successes,...