You should read this book.
As an emergency room physician in a New York City hospital, Dr. Farzon Navhi is inherently qualified to describe the trial and tribulations of working in an ER. As an outstanding writer and an ER physician, he is uniquely qualified to tell the story in a way that will keep you turning pages deep into the night.
Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER begins with a somewhat lengthy (though not overbearing) prologue that describes the dark days of the beginning of the COVID epidemic. Navhi weaves text messages sent between health care providers with insight that can only be gained by standing on the front lines into a gripping story set in what must have felt like he and his colleagues had descended into a previously unknown level of hell.
The book then describes a single pre-pandemic night shift in a New York City hospital. If you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to visit a large urban ER in the middle of the night, you probably think you know something of the general chaos that ensues. But you haven’t experienced it from a ER doctor’s perspective. Yet.
Dr. Nahvi’s first patient arrives in the ER with paramedics giving her CPR. That patient’s story is cleverly intertwined throughout the shift as Nahvi and the team of professionals it takes to make an ER function press their way through the evening.
If you have any interest in the practice of medicine, or our health care system, Code Gray is a fascinating and enlightening read. If you have zero interest in medicine or the health care system, Code Gray is a fascinating and enlightening read. The life-lessons it contains were a pleasant surprise. You don’t need to be an Ivy League graduate, as Nahvi is, to grasp how his experiences translate into valuable insight on living life.
Code Gray is extremely well-written, a terrific story, a historical look at a once-in-a-century pandemic, and a primer on how attitude and self-reflection can help you live a more enriching life. I’m not sure what else anyone could ask from a book.
You should read this book.
Publication date February 21, 2023.
Special thanks to Netgalley, Simon & Schuster, and Dr. Farzon A. Navhi for providing the Advance Reader Copy of Code Gray. This review is my honest and personal opinion.
From the publisher:
Code Gray is a narrative-driven medical memoir that places you directly in the crucible of urgent life-or-death decision-making, offering insights that can help us cope at a time when the world around us appears to be falling apart.
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Amazon reviews for Code Gray (Available after publication)
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Buy Code Gray on Amazon. To be published February 21, 2023.
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