Stories from my Life

By Sydney Philip Hecker M.D.

Dr. Hecker describes his youthful adventures and social stresses in a community of Jewish immigrants in Toronto with warmth and humor. He gives a surprising and dramatic account of medicine of the early 1950s. As an intern, the most important lesson he learned was how little he knew about medicine. Influenced by his father's untimely death from pulmonary embolism five years earlier, he then spent three additional years studying related fields - pulmonary disease, thrombosis, and preventive medicine - at Georgetown University in Washington D.C.. In his fifth post-graduate year, as chief resident in a 1600 bed hospital, he stressed the importance of teamwork in medical practice and began his research career. He then set his sights on multi-specialty group practice, a rarity at that time. He joined the pioneering Palo Alto Medical Clinic in California as a specialist in internal medicine in 1957. He was doctor number 96. His subsequent 43 year trajectory there included: international clinical researcher, executive board member, clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford School of Medicine, Medical Director of the Health Plans Department at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. He also became involved in medical politics at local, state, and national levels. Stories about unusual patients, venal insurance companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers' sly sales tactics, internal group as well as town-gown squabbles, and organized medicine's efforts to influence state legislation, are enlightening as seen from the inside.But his life, not medicine, dominates. The stories are about extra-ordinary people, amazing coincidences, battles won and lost, injustice and personal struggle, and the rough-and-tumble of politics. Art, artists and the passion of collecting, foreign cultures and experiences, endearing friends, dedicated teachers, even a narrow escape of arrest as a spy in Korea, enrich this unusual collection. Though sometimes painful and devastatingly personal, the stories are ultimately uplifting.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1496168208
• ISBN13: 9781496168207
• Release Date: April 2014
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 292 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"