Daniela Lamas

Update

This event has been canceled. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Harvard Book Store and Mass Humanities welcome physician and writer DANIELA LAMAS—pulmonary and critical care doctor at the Brigham & Women's Hospital and instructor in medicine at Harvard Medical School—for a discussion of her debut book, You Can Stop Humming Now: A Doctor's Stories of Life, Death, and In Between.

About You Can Stop Humming Now

Modern medicine is a world that glimmers with new technology and cutting-edge research. To the public eye, medical stories often begin with sirens and flashing lights and culminate in survival or death. But these are only the most visible narratives. As a critical care doctor treating people at their sickest, Daniela Lamas is fascinated by a different story: what comes after for those whose lives are extended by days, months, or years as a result of our treatments and technologies?

In You Can Stop Humming Now, Lamas explores the complex answers to this question through intimate accounts of patients and their families. A grandfather whose failing heart has been replaced by a battery-operated pump; a salesman who found himself a kidney donor on social media; a college student who survived a near-fatal overdose and returned home, alive but not the same; and a young woman navigating an adulthood she never thought she'd live to see—these moving narratives paint a detailed picture of the fragile border between sickness and health.

Riveting, gorgeously told, and deeply personal, You Can Stop Humming Now is a compassionate, uncompromising look at the choices and realities that many of us, and our families, may one day face.

Praise

"Daniela Lamas is the real thing. Her voice is wry, compassionate, sometimes doctorly, and sometimes not. And she's written a gripping, soaring, inspiring book about the sickest people on the planet. It's an important story too—about not only death but also survival. Read it. You'll see things you've never seen. You'll be moved. And you'll discover a voice you want to hear more from." ―Atul Gawande, author of Being Mortal

"Medicine's miracles are everywhere to behold. But what about the day after? Lamas explores a world that few have ever contemplated—how we live after the dramatic save by the technological prowess of modern medicine. This eye-opening book reveals the gains and the costs—both to the body and to the spirit—of altering nature's predestined course. In turns anguishing, gripping, and hopeful, You Can Stop Humming Now is a must-read for anyone contemplating what medicine holds in store for us." ―Danielle Ofri, author of What Patients Say, What Doctors Feel

"This is a rare and wonderful book, filled with insight, warmth, and a deep humanity that hits us with real emotion rather than sentimentality. If Daniela Lamas is as good a doctor as she is a writer, her patients are very lucky indeed." ―Jeff Lindsay, author of the Dexter series