CONDITION CRITICAL
THE STORY OF A NURSE CONTINUES
REVISED 2024
CONDITON CRITICAL: The Story of a Nurse is the compelling sequel to the New York Times bestselling INTENSIVE CARE: The Story of a Nurse.
With her trademark wit and razor-sharp sensibilities, critical care nurse Echo Heron gives readers an intimate view into the emotional and often shocking world behind the closed doors of a hospital.
Sidestepping antiquated bureaucratic rules, Heron chronicles her second decade in the battlefields of critical care detailing her patients' often heartbreaking (and sometimes humorous) stories in ways that will stay entrenched in the reader's memory. As the struggle to protect and care for her patients grows more stressful due to increasing budget cuts and understaffing, Heron must face the toll it is taking on her own life.
Whether dealing with the schizophrenic Death Row inmate who must recover in time for his scheduled execution, coping with haunted hospital rooms or tackling the daily Emergency Room fare of freak accidents, overdoses, suicides, and the myriad victims of man's brutal inhumanity to man, CONDITION CRITICAL is an unforgettable fast paced read you won't want to miss.
IN PRAISE OF CONDITION CRITICAL:
"Critical care nurse Heron will make readers laugh and cry with this graphic, often shocking look at life in the trenches of an unidentified high-tech hospital in San Francisco...Heron writes with emotional intensity and sassy humor as she critiques the hospital's corner-cutting bureaucracy." — Publishers Weekly
"ENTERTAINING...gritty, behind-the-scenes details of hospital operations." — Booklist
"An UNCOMPROMISING and often visionary sequel to her bestseller, INTENSIVE CARE." — San Francisco Chronicle
"In the prologue of this book, Echo Heron, RN, states: 'Nurses are able to do what they do because they are rich in the gifts of healing, compassion and love.' She then goes on to illustrate that statement with 18 chapters of amusing and moving true stories of her career in critical care and the emergency room." — Chicago Tribune
"Heron gives her readers a graphic, eyewitness description of modern medicine from the front lines...vivid...heartbreaking." — Tacoma News Tribune
"Heron frequently inspires laughter, tears, and awe through her vivid descriptions of a 'normal' workday. With keen sensibilities and wry expressiveness, she fleshes out brief patient vignettes in ways that haunt one's memory....At a time when healthcare is changing, euthanasia is in the public consciousness, and fear of hospital experience continues, Echo Heron's CONDITION CRITICAL opens the door on these and other topics with characteristic honesty, humor and passion." — Women's Magazine
"A shocking tell-all about hospital procedures as witnessed through the eyes of a nurse." — Library Journal
"Heron gives a voice to her fellow nurses (a savvy, wisecracking, take-no-guff voice) and turns them into real people." — Seattle Post-Intelligencer
MEDIA INFORMAION FOR
CONDITION CRITICAL: THE STORY OF A NURSE CONTINUES
Nonfiction/True Medicine/Autobiographical
1994 Fawcett
1995 Ivy/ Ballantine
REVISED AND REPUBLISHED 2024 /HERON QUILL PRESS
BESTSELLER LISTS:
San Francisco Chronicle
Waldenbooks
Literary Guild alternate selection
MAGAZINE EXCERPTS:
Cosmopolitan, Glamour, Ladies' Home Journal, Family Circle
FOREIGN RIGHTS: Britain, Austria, Slovakia
FILM OPTIONS: Telecom, Inc., Citadel Inc.
MEDIA TOURS (partial list): New York City, Boston, Albany, Washington DC, Toronto, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, Dayton, Atlanta, Denver, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco // National Public Radio - Washington D.C, CNN Nightline