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Short Synopsis
A pioneering surgeon shares memories from a life in one of surgery's most demanding fields. Last Night in the OR is an exhilarating, fast-paced, and beautifully written memoir, one that will captivate readers with its courage, intimacy, and honesty.

Full Synopsis
The 1980s marked a revolution in the field of organ transplants, and Bud Shaw, MD, who studied under Tom Starzl in Pittsburgh, was on the front lines. Now retired from active practice, Dr. Shaw relays gripping moments of anguish and elation, frustration and reward, despair and hope in his struggle to save patients.

He reveals harshly intimate moments of his medical career: telling a patient's husband that his wife has died during surgery; struggling to complete a twenty-hour operation as mental and physical exhaustion inch closer and closer; and flying to retrieve a donor organ while the patient waits in the operating room. Within these more emotionally charged vignettes are quieter ones, too, like growing up in rural Ohio, and being awakened late at night by footsteps in the hall as his father, also a surgeon, slipped out of the house to attend to a patient in the ER.

"A bracing, unusual personal narrative that should appeal to aspiring physicians as well as to those considering the 'big questions' around high-risk surgery." ---Kirkus

"An eye-opening perspective on the human condition and an eloquent contribution to our dialogue about what care is, and why we should care." ---Janet Burroway, author of Raw Silk

"Bud Shaw's writing is scalpel sharp, close to the bone and true to the heart." ---Mark Vonnegut, author of The Eden Express

Last Night in the OR

A Transplant Surgeon's Odyssey

Author Bud Shaw

Narrated by Jonathan Yen

Publication date Sep 29, 2015

Running time 8 hrs 22 min

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