Product Description
“I cannot ignore the reality of the body, its glorious beginnings and its subtle endings,” writes Cortney Davis in this intimate and startlingly original account of her work at a women’s clinic. A poet and nurse-practitioner with twenty five years’ experience, Davis reveals the beauty of the body’s workings by unfolding the lives of four patients who struggle with its natural cycles and unexpected surprises: pregnancy and childbirth, illness and recovery, sexual dys… More >>
I Knew a Woman: Four Women Patients and Their Female Caregiver
Tags: Caregiver, Female, Four, Knew, Patients, Their, Woman, women
#1 by J. Reid on April 25, 2010 - 4:20 am
Written by a nurse this book examines the relationships she develops with several of her patients. Examining their reactions and her own to the problems faced by women relating to their bodies, their health and social situations. Very moving and at times a real eye opener.
As a male nurse I saw parallels to my own experiences. I also came to appreciate nuances of a woman’s experiences and viewpoint previously unknown to me.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Randall H. Rahn on April 25, 2010 - 6:40 am
This book is a must-read, not just for nurses, but for all caregivers, and that includes almost everybody, certainly all women. “We are sisters, all of us, no matter our heritage or our destination. We walk the narrow edge between disability and physical health, between despair and strength. We share the ever-changing environment of the female body.” Cortney Davis’ I Knew a Woman is literature in the grandest tradition-it educates as well as delights. She weaves the stories of her patients’ journeys toward knowledge and acceptance with her personal story of discovery. Along the way she enlightens readers about a wide range of female experiences. We learn a lot from Davis’ patients, Renee, Lila, Joanna and Eleanor. While we may not share their specific physical problems, we share, as sisters, their feelings, emotions and responses. Thanks, Ms. Davis.
Rating: 5 / 5
#3 by Muriel A Murch on April 25, 2010 - 9:09 am
In I Knew a Woman Cortney Davis leads us where every woman fears to tread; through the swing doors and down the corridors to an often far-to-busy-to-see-us women’s clinic reception desk. The poorer the clinic the more tatty and out of date the magazines, scattered like bird seed to keep our minds occupied while we wait. But there is rarely any item in them to calm the nervousness that women feel on checking in. After the wait your name is called, you go to a room, undress to wait again. Nothing unlocks the nervousness that numbs the mind. Nothing that is, until Davis or one of the legion of nurses like her enters the room. But what is it that these nurses really do for women? I think the answer is that as much as we open and give them, they receive us as complete women.
Long ago Davis honed the art of nursing her complete patient and over the last decade she has also practiced the art of writing. In her poetry and prose she gives us back ourselves, a mirror image of our womanhood. See, she seems to say, see, this is you and this is all of us, do not be afraid.
Davis is a poet as well as a prose writer and in I Knew a Woman her prose has reached a new level of lyrical movement. During the late fifties, as medical knowledge and science began to explode the person inside the patient was often getting left behind. Dr. A.F. Clark-Kennedy of the London Hospital wrote a small book called Patients as People; Medicine in its Human Setting. (Faber and Faber London 1957). He wove the stories of patients and their disease together showing young doctors and nurses how each related to the other. It was not until the seventies that physician writers such as Richard Selzer invited us to look again and remember patients as people. Davis has claimed her place alongside these two fine literate physicians as a writer of such caliber. I Knew a Woman is a book to be read by everyone; teachers, nurses, physicians and woman patients. Davis led us into the clinic with her poetic prose and we leave I Knew a Woman with a stronger and more open heart.
Muriel Murch
Author Journey in the Middle of the Road.
Producer Living with Literature for community radio.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Anonymous on April 25, 2010 - 9:25 am
I loved this book! As a newspaper journalist I read and review books regularly and recognize an outstanding one when it comes along.
I Knew A Woman reads like a novel, though every bit of information about the female body, and what goes on behind the curtain in an exam room is factual. In it we follow four characters through a busy women’s health clinic, similar to the one at the Connecticut Hospital where the Ms.Davis works. She uses the characters (as a vehicle) to explain in detail the inner workings of the female body, and the medical procedures we endure in the name of preventive health care. Ms. Davis demystifies each procedure — including life-saving treatments women undergo when our bodies turn against us – the equipment used, and the technical jargon that gathers in the air above our heads.”
I Knew A Woman is a book for friends to recommend to friends, for big sisters to give to little sisters, for mothers and daughters and grandmothers. It is positively a “must read” for every teenager and adult living in a female body. I highly recommend this book to anyone, male or female, in the care giving business. There is much to learn here about treating each patient as an individual rather than a number or the “broken leg” or “laceration” or “hysterectomy” in room 2.
Perhaps the best reason for reading “I Knew A Woman: The Experience of the female Body” is expressed by Ms. Davis herself in the introduction to the book. “What happens to a woman within the privacy of an exam room is crucially significant. That woman is our mother or sister, our wife or lover, our daughters, our granddaughters, ourselves. What happens to her happens to us all.”
This is not a book to be overlooked. Jean Sands
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by Anonymous on April 25, 2010 - 10:19 am
As a male reader, let me stress that this is not “a book for women, written by a woman.” This book is about the human act of caring, and giving care, to humans who need it. A few years ago, my sister fell gravely ill, an experience that cannot but leave one with painful memories. But as I visited my comatose sister in ICU, I was struck by the quality of care by the nursing staff — care which is not and cannot be valued in dollars. Male nurses and female nurses alike went out of their ways to make Peggy as comfortable as possible, and to assure her family and friends that they were doing everything they knew how to do to get her well. Davis’s book is about that kind of dedication, which springs from the heart of a special breed of human — the nurse and the nurse practitioner. It details the stories of four women of all social strata who find themselves at the mercy of caregivers, primarily Ms. Davis herself, and who receive a gift that lets them emerge richer than before the experience. It is a dramatic book filled with high and low points, humor, despair, and love. While the book does educate you about certain illnesses and their treatment or prevention, it is not the Merck Manual or Gray’s Anatomy — it is a profound expression of love that Davis obviously feels toward her patients and toward all humankind. It is a book for women, certainly; but it is a book for all men who love their wives and lovers and sisters and daughters and mothers.
Rating: 5 / 5