A Measure of My Days: The Journal of a Country DoctorUPNE, 1997 - 321 pages This is the story of one year in the life of a family physician in Belfast, Maine, and his connections not just to that community but to the Human family. In thoughtful, elegiac, often lyrical prose, David Loxterkamp muses about his patients, his colleagues, his family, and his relationship to his Maker as he recalls the daily minutiae that constitute "the bookmarks in a bountiful life, a string of facts and circumstances that have moved beyond the mere documentary" to his discovery of "peace and perspective and companionship along my muddled way." That way, which is faithfully mapped by journal entries, is populated by the characters he has come to know: the lobstermen, millworkers, church-goers, back-to-the-landers, and "those from away" who share this picturesque, bare-bones, blue-collar piece of Maine coast. We meet Elena, whose fatal Lou Gehrig's disease reduces her speech to air made into letters on a computer screen. Bernitha languishes in a slow death from lung cancer. A laboring mother deals with her pain, uncertainty, and the realized possibility of a deformed infant. Through the dull and the dramatic, the mundane and the magnificent, Loxterkamp finds his way and fashions "an anthem to the Good God" with deeply moving, "everyday stories of an irrepressible human spirit, a spirit refined by adversity and renewed by love." |
From inside the book
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Contents
August | 24 |
Autumn A Good Death Is Hard to Find | 79 |
Winter The Watch | 155 |
Spring In the Midst of Death | 171 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
afternoon arrived asked attend baby Belfast better birthday blessing breath C-section cancer Catholic Cathy Ceriani cervix Christmas Church Clare daughter death Demerol depression door dying Elena emphysema eyes face faith family doctor family practice Father Mike fear feel felt finally Foley catheter friends Greek Revival heart home health nurses hope Hospice Wing hospital Kathleen Norris kids Kremmling labor last night later leave Lindsay Lindsay and Clare Lindsay's lives lungs Mary Beth Mass medicine meeting memories minutes months mother neighbor nurses obstetrician oxygen pain parents parish patient Patricia Hampl perhaps physician Pitocin reassured Scott Searsport seemed sense share sleep snausages snow story suffering surgeon talked telephone theophylline Thomas Merton Tim's tion town Trappist waiting Waldo County wanted watch week weekend wife words worry
References to this book
The Soul of the Physician: Doctors Speaking about Passion, Resilience, and Hope No preview available - 2002 |
Essays in Honour of Michael Bliss: Figuring the Social Alison Li,Elsbeth Heaman,Shelley McKellar Limited preview - 2008 |