Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: You Can Stop Humming Now
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Boston
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
https://www.aftertheicu.org/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2018046346
Descriptive conventions:
rda
Personal name heading:
Lamas, Daniela
Field of activity: Medicine
Affiliation: Brigham and Women's Hospital Harvard Medical School
Profession or occupation:
Physicians College teachers
Found in: Lamas, Daniela. You can stop humming now, 2018: title page
(Daniela Lamas) jacket flap (Daniela Lamas is a
pulmonary and critical care doctor at Brigham & Women's
Hospital and a faculty memeber at Harvard Medical School
and Ariadne Labs. This is her first book.)
Associated language:
eng
================================================================================
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Library of Congress
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Washington, DC 20540
Questions? Contact: ils@loc.gov
PERSONAL
Female.
EDUCATION:Harvard University, B.A. (history, philosophy of science), (magna cum laude), 2003; Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, MD.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Miami Herald, medical reporter, 2003-4; Columbia New York Presbyterian, internal medicine resident, 2008-11; New England Journal of Medicine, editorial fellow, 2011-12; Brigham & Women’s Hospital, pulmonary and critical care doctor, 2012-; Harvard Medical School, Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow at Ariadne Labs; ABC News Medical Unit.
WRITINGS
Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Miami Herald, Newyorker.com, Boston Globe, Atlantic, and New York Times.
SIDELIGHTS
Daniela Lamas works as a pulmonary and critical care doctor at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital and is affiliated as faculty with Harvard Medical School. She was also a medical reporter at the Miami Herald and has published health-related articles in Boston Globe, the Atlantic, and New York Times. She is a Harvard University graduate and earned her medical degree from Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons.
In 2018 Lamas published You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and in Between, in which she presents cases from her career treating people at their sickest during critical moments that address how survivors deal with life lived days, months, or years after they were treated. In Kirkus Reviews, a writer called the book “An unflinching report from the front lines of critical care medicine, a technology-driven field in which doctors routinely save patients’ lives—sometimes at great cost to their physical and mental health.” The critically ill are cognizant of their precarious condition, yet have a strong will to survive and live what life they have left to the fullest. Lamas describes numerous cases of people with heart disease, cystic fibrosis, cardiac arrhythmias, kidney failure, and a near-fatal overdose.
Lamas helps bridge “the chasm that separated what happened in the intensive care unit from what came afterward,” she said in a USA Today article by Matt McCarthy. She tells patients that they are experiencing a new state in medicine—post-intensive-care syndrome—and they receive reassurance and hope. McCarthy praised the book, saying that “Warmth and humanity radiate from every page.” As Lamas manages to be both clinical and compassionate, she presents how patients live between life and death, and she offers the message “that we must consider recovery and quality of life when making medical decisions,” said Booklist contributor Patricia Smith.
Michele Au observed online at Boston Globe: “Physicians learn early on to walk a fine line in the care of their patients. Get too close, identify too much, become too invested, and run the risk of clouding objectivity and letting each story consume you. … The book is a love letter to her patients. It is a wondrous testament to the strength and tenacity of those under our care who fight to live another day under unthinkable odds.” In this ruminative account, “The author wonderfully captures the lives of those who’ve completed treatment and adjusted to a new existence,” according to a Publishers Weekly reviewer.
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, February 15, 2018, Patricia Smith, review of You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and In Between, p. 10.
Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2018, review of You Can Stop Humming Now.
Publishers Weekly, January 15, 2018, review of You Can Stop Humming Now, p. 55.
USA Today, April 12, 2018, Matt McCarthy, review of You Can Stop Humming Now, p. 02D.
ONLINE
Boston Globe, https://www.bostonglobe.com/ (March 21, 2018), Michelle Au, review of You Can Stop Humming Now.
Daniela Lamas Website, https://www.danielalamas.com (July 9, 2018).
Daniela Lamas
--Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow, Brigham & Women's Hospital, freelance medical writer
Boston, Massachusetts
Medical Practice
Current
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Previous
The New England Journal of Medicine, Columbia New York Presbyterian, The Miami Herald
Education
Harvard University
56
connections
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Summary
I'm a physician in subspecialty training and freelance writer and reporter on health topics, published in newyorker.com, atlantic.com and NYT. Seeking a career with big impact, at the forefront of changing health while explaining the nuance in medicine to the lay world.
Experience
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Fellow, Pulmonary and Critical Care Department
Brigham and Women's Hospital
July 2012 – Present (6 years)Greater Boston Area
Fellow in Pulmonary & Critical Care Medicine, conducting research on end-of-life and communication for seriously ill patients who've survived the ICU as part of Ariadne Labs. Interested in careers regarding medical communications and the intersection of medicine and industry.
Editorial Fellow
The New England Journal of Medicine
June 2011 – June 2012 (1 year 1 month)Boston, MA
Internal Medicine Resident
Columbia New York Presbyterian
June 2008 – June 2011 (3 years 1 month)Greater New York City Area
The Miami Herald
Reporter
The Miami Herald
June 2003 – June 2004 (1 year 1 month)
Education
Harvard University
Harvard University
Bachelor's degree, History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
1999 – 2003
Studied history and science, with a thesis on the history of botulinum toxin - from canning scourge to botox. Worked as the Managing Editor of The Harvard Crimson.
Activities and Societies: The Harvard Crimson
Volunteer Experience & Causes
Causes Daniela cares about:
Arts and Culture
Health
Science and Technology
Skills
ResearchMicrosoft OfficeManagementMicrosoft ExcelMicrosoft WordPowerPointLeadershipTrainingPhotoshopInternal MedicinePulmonary DiseasesCritical CareMedical Writing
How's this translation?
Great•Has errors
Certifications
Internal Medicine, board certified
ABIM Foundation
Languages
English
Spanish
Projects
Atlantic Pieces
Team members:
Daniela Lamas
NYT Pieces
Links to publications in the NYT Well Section
Team members:
Daniela Lamas
New Yorker Pieces
Team members:
Daniela Lamas
Scientific Publications
Original research and opinions
Team members:
Daniela Lamas
Organizations
American Thoracic Society
Daniela Lamas
Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School
Boston, Massachusetts
Higher Education
Current
Harvard, Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Education
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
12
connections
View Daniela Lamas’ full profile. It's free!
Your colleagues, classmates, and 500 million other professionals are on LinkedIn.
View Daniela’s Full Profile
Summary
Clinician-researcher and writer with first book to be published by Little, Brown March 2018
Experience
Clinical Fellow
Harvard
Present
Harvard Medical School
Instructor in Medicine
Harvard Medical School
2016 – Present (2 years)Boston MA
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Faculty Member, Pulmonary and Critical Care Division
Brigham and Women's Hospital
2016 – Present (2 years)Boston, MA
Education
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Doctor of Medicine - MD
2004 – 2008
Harvard University
Harvard University
Bachelor of Arts - BA, History and Science
1999 – 2003
Biographical Notes
Following her graduation from Harvard College magna cum laude in 2003, Daniela Lamas was a medical reporter at the Miami Herald. She went on to earn her M.D. at Columbia College of Physicians & Surgeons, where she completed her internship and residency. In 2011, she served as an editorial fellow at the New England Journal of Medicine, under Harvard Medical School Professor and Journal editor-in-chief Dr. Jeffrey Drazen. She is currently a Pulmonary and Critical Care Fellow at Harvard, where she works at Ariadne Labs, an innovation laboratory headed by Dr. Atul Gawande. She has also worked on the ABC News Medical Unit, led by Dr. Richard Besser. As a writer, she has been published in Newyorker.com, The Boston Globe, The Atlantic and she has had numerous pieces published in the New York Times.
Other details
About Daniela Lamas
Work
Brigham and Women's Hospital
Instructor in Medicine · July 2016 to present · Boston, Massachusetts
Pulmonary and Critical Care
Current City and Hometown
Boston, Massachusetts
Current city
Boston, Massachusetts
Hometown
Favorites
Athletes
[Ricardo "The Bully" Lamas]
Ricardo "The Bully" Lamas
Other
Breast Cancer Awareness, BB&N Alumni, Harvard Graduate School of Education, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Harvard Crimson Alumni, Fitness Together (Miami), Equinox, The Handle Bar, uniform., James Hamblin, The New York Times - Well - Health, MyLVAD, TACT2, Padre Alberto Gambarini, Rabbi Getzel Rosenberg Davis, Marc Ambinder, Brooklyn Fitboxing Coral Gables
About Daniela J. Lamas, MD
Gender
Female
Specialties
Pulmonary and Critical Care
Education
Medical School
Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, 2008
Residency
New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia, 2008 - 2011
Board Certifications
Internal Medicine, 2012
Daniela Lamas is a pulmonary and critical care doctor at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and faculty at Harvard Medical School. Following graduation from Harvard College, she went on to earn her MD at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons, where she also completed internship and residency. She then returned to Boston for her subspecialty fellowship. She has worked as a medical reporter at the Miami Herald and is frequently published in the New York Times.
Her first book, You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and In Between, is now available for purchase!
Daniela Lamas is a Pulmonary and Critical Care physician at Brigham & Women’s Hospital, Instructor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Faculty at Ariadne Labs, where she works with the Serious Illness Care Program. Her clinical and research areas of focus are in long-term critical care survivorship, palliative care in the ICU and decision-making surrounding chronic critical illness.
Additionally, she is co-PI for a PCORI Tier Pipeline to Proposal grant to improve services for ICU survivors. She is also the PI for a Society of Critical Care Medicine-funded THRIVE initiative to create follow-up clinics for ICU survivors. She writes regularly on these topics for the lay public, and is most frequently published in the New York Times.
You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and In Between
Publishers Weekly. 265.3 (Jan. 15, 2018): p55.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and In Between
Daniela J. Lamas. Little, Brown, $28 (256p) ISBN 978-0-316-39317-1
In this ruminative account of treating patients, Lamas, a pulmonary and critical care doctor at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, analyzes how the critically ill manage life during and after treatment. She meets people who are neither bitter nor sorrowful about their conditions, but are constantly aware of their precarious states. Among her patients are Van, a grandfather tethered to a battery-operated heart device, which, when fully charged, allows him to camp or fish with his grandson, and Meghan, a young woman who outlives her cystic fibrosis prognosis and attends college, continuing her physical therapy in her dorm room. When Lamas visits Ben, a young man with brain damage, she witnesses a mother revelling in Ben's small victories, such as when he attempts to make a sandwich. Through these visits and others, Lamas weaves a thoughtful and beautiful narrative: "I wanted to know how they would learn to adapt to new realities and whether they would regret the decisions they had made." The author wonderfully captures the lives of those who've completed treatment and adjusted to a new existence. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and In Between." Publishers Weekly, 15 Jan. 2018, p. 55. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A523888943/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=4e2c89fd. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A523888943
You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and in Between
Patricia Smith
Booklist. 114.12 (Feb. 15, 2018): p10.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Full Text:
You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and in Between.
By Daniela Lamas.
Mar. 2018. 256p. Little, Brown, $28 (9780316393171); e-book (97803163931881.610.
Critical care patients have life-threatening conditions ranging from deadly cardiac arrhythmias to multiple organ failure. These conditions require intensive monitoring from clinicians and often lead to invasive medical interventions. Lamas, a critical care physician, reflects on her experience caring for such patients and their families in this stirring memoir. She follows the care of a handful of patients, providing intimate accounts of how their experiences in critical care impacted their lives in the short term and continue to shape their lives today. Lamas touts the successes of modern medicine but does not shy away from acknowledging unintended negative consequences of life-saving interventions, including patients suffering from PTSD after stints in critical care. Lamas somehow manages to be both clinical and compassionate and beautifully conveys how the line between life and death is not always clear and that we must consider recovery and quality of life when making medical decisions. An important read for anyone involved with, affected by, or curious about critical care medicine. --Patricia Smith
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Smith, Patricia. "You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and in Between." Booklist, 15 Feb. 2018, p. 10. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A531171480/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=5e36c5f1. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A531171480
Lamas, Daniela J.: YOU CAN STOP HUMMING NOW
Kirkus Reviews. (Jan. 15, 2018):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Lamas, Daniela J. YOU CAN STOP HUMMING NOW Little, Brown (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 3, 27 ISBN: 978-0-316-39317-1
An unflinching report from the front lines of critical care medicine, a technology-driven field in which doctors routinely save patients' lives--sometimes at great cost to their physical and mental health.
Incredible advances in medical technologies and treatments have created a new class of patient: those who survived a significant illness because of an emergency intervention. Such interventions may include surgery to help your lungs breathe, your heart pump blood, or your kidneys process waste. Often, a machine keeps you alive. Only a minority of patients who undergo such procedures make it home, and even fewer return to lives that resembled those they lived before they spent time in the hospital. Yet critical care gives patients and their families hope, and many people choose without hesitation to undergo any procedure that may extend their lives. Lamas, a critical care doctor and faculty member at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, moves beyond the hospital to tell the stories of these survivors. Through beautiful storytelling, she traces the lives of patients after the initial relief of being alive is shadowed by the new reality of recovery and self-care. One mother waited years to receive a lung transplant and would have died waiting were it not for a machine that could oxygenate blood outside of her body, bypassing her lungs and heart. Then there is the popular neighborhood father who would do anything for a new kidney and a grandfather who plugs into the wall every night to keep his heart pumping blood so he can get to know his grandson. Without exception, each of the people the author met is exceptionally motivated to make the most of his or her second chance. Their stories are heart-rending and inspiring, and it is evident that Lamas is deeply moved by the consequences of the actions she and other doctors take every day.
An enthralling reminder that behind every medical advance are the people whose lives it affects and that their stories have impact.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Lamas, Daniela J.: YOU CAN STOP HUMMING NOW." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Jan. 2018. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A522642998/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=249700ba. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A522642998
'Humming': Life stories after intensive care
USA Today. (Apr. 12, 2018): Lifestyle: p02D.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/
Full Text:
Byline: Matt McCarthy, Special to USA TODAY
Doctors are a tough crowd. When one of our own writes a book, we're inherently skeptical and, if I'm being honest, a touch envious. What can this physician have to say, we wonder, that I don't already know?
As Daniela Lamas reveals in her dazzling new book, You Can Stop Humming Now (Little, Brown, 256 pp., ***1/2 out of four), the answer becomes clear after just a few pages: quite a bit.
Lamas begins her book by letting us in on a secret: During residency training, she was known as the one who wouldn't let patients die. Regardless of the prognosis, she would not accept death as a potential outcome for those under her care. I can vouch for this.
Lamas and I were part of the same intern class at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center a decade ago, and she quickly established herself as a gifted and devoted physician with a talent for writing. Back then, she wrote pieces that challenged the status quo, pushing the boundaries of what doctors-in-training could (and should) write about. Her work irked hospital administrators, but it delighted the rest of us.
Lamas is now an attending physician in Boston, caring for critically ill patients in the intensive care unit of the hospital where she was born. She has a decade of medical practice under her belt, and in her new book, she effortlessly captures the rhythm and mayhem of modern medicine.
This slender volume is not a typical medical memoir, however; we're not here to learn about the author's development as a physician. The focus is on others, those who have survived the intensive care unit and are struggling to cope with the challenges of life with chronic critical illness.
Intrigued by their stories, Lamas starts a clinic to help them navigate their new lives. It's a provocative idea, but she initially has difficulty attracting patients. "These were people with terrifying memories of what had happened to them in the hospital, people who might not be willing to return " Some were understandably scared of hospitals, while others had new memory deficits and simply couldn't remember to come back.
Eventually, the patients trickle in, and together they work though the challenges of adjusting to daily life. One patient is afraid to be alone with his young son, worried that he could die and leave his child without a father; another is too anxious to cook, fearing she will forget to turn off the oven.
Lamas helps bridge "the chasm that separated what happened in the intensive care unit from what came afterward." She explains to patients that they're confronting a new entity in medicine: post-intensive-care syndrome. "We gave our patients a name and a diagnosis," she writes, "and with that, I think, a degree of reassurance and perhaps even hope." Warmth and humanity radiate from every page.
Lamas and her team are doing something innovative by providing a lifeline to patients we tend not to think about: those who should feel fortunate just to be alive. But these men and women have very real problems and conditions that go under-reported and untreated. The patients in this book have something important to say, and so does the author. We should all be listening.
Matt McCarthy, an internist at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, is the author of The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly.
CAPTION(S):
photo
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"'Humming': Life stories after intensive care." USA Today, 12 Apr. 2018, p. 02D. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A534541541/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b9f27e9. Accessed 31 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A534541541
Humanely told stories of lives saved and lost
By Michelle Au Globe Correspondent March 21, 2018
aniela Lamas is a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
Beowulf Sheehan
Daniela Lamas is a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
For doctors, there are patients, and stories, that stick with us. They linger in the corners of our minds, stain who we are, shape what we become. Some give hope and perspective, others haunt. All doctors have such tales but not all can tell them this well.
“You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and In Between’’ is a collection of vignettes culled from over a decade of Daniela Lamas’s training in intensive-care medicine, where she learned to care for the sickest of the sick. It casts a steady, unblinking eye on the triumphs, failures, and blind spots of modern medicine: the seemingly miraculous extent of what we can now do for our patients and the crippling disappointment that comes with the realization of what we still cannot.
In her introduction, Lamas, a pulmonary and critical-care doctor at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, recounts a patient she took care of as a resident, a 90-year-old man hospitalized for life-threatening anemia due to an intractable gastrointestinal bleed. It was a medical problem she approached with a young doctor’s zeal for checklists, algorithms, and the unflinching trust that medicine could almost always eke out a fix. She and her team found themselves unable to solve the problem. The patient was getting no better, but still, they were keeping him alive, weren’t they? And that, surely, was some version of a win?
“The days went by until one morning, my patient told me he was done. You can’t be done, I thought. You’re still bleeding,” Lamas recalls. “I needed him to understand that if he stuck with us a bit longer, then maybe we could make him better.” Gently but persistently, the patient insisted on being sent home. “He didn’t want our kind of better. He missed his home and his bed . . . and the way it was quiet at night and the sunlight crept through his bedroom window each morning.’’ And, “[h]e understood the consequences.’’
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The patient died at home shortly thereafter, and months later, Lamas was surprised by a heartfelt gift from the family, thanking her for the care she had provided. The discouraging outcome she had written off as a bewildering failure on the part of the medical team turned out, in the final analysis, to be the resolution the patient wanted for himself.
Lamas’s work is an elegantly written, intimate examination of the very nature of life itself and the qualities that doctors fight to preserve. As medical advancements allow us to keep sicker patients alive longer, it has created a murky liminal space where the various costs of doing so don’t always justify the mere fact of survival itself. In caring for critically ill patients, she asks herself, what constitutes a failure? What is a success? And how do we determine the difference between the two?
In a series of chapters, Lamas relates more such cases, like that of a weakened 28-year-old investment banker hooked to machines to bolster his failing heart, and who asks her over Facebook: “Can I stop the humming yet?’’ The grandfather so hungry for more time with his grandson that each night, he dutifully plugs in to charge the battery-powered cardiac-assist device keeping him alive. The young woman who outlives her cystic fibrosis prognosis to an unanticipated adulthood.
Physicians learn early on to walk a fine line in the care of their patients. Get too close, identify too much, become too invested, and run the risk of clouding objectivity and letting each story consume you. With open warmth and an attention to the fine-grained details, Lamas struggles with it all and turns those in her stories from patients back into people. Her account makes a compelling case for getting closer, identifying more, and above all, listening.
Ultimately, the book is a love letter to her patients. It is a wondrous testament to the strength and tenacity of those under our care who fight to live another day under unthinkable odds. Patients awaiting transplants that they will almost certainly never receive. Patients battling severe chronic illnesses, their days numbered but uncertain. Patients living in the shadow of death and the quiet grace that accompanies it, making the smallest pleasures of everyday life seem unimaginably precious. It is a celebration of those lives, an acknowledgement of what medical professionals can and cannot provide, offering some patients “possibility and time, opening and extending longer than expected,” and asking when, if ever, that time is enough.
YOU CAN STOP HUMMING NOW:
A Doctor’s Stories of Life, Death, and In Between
By Daniela Lamas
Little, Brown, 245 pp., $28
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Michelle Au is an anesthesiologist at Emory-St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta and author of the medical memoir “This Won’t Hurt a Bit (And Other White Lies)’’