No Apparent Distress: A Doctor’s Coming-of-Age on the Front Lines of American Medicine
About this audiobook
A brutally frank memoir about doctors and patients in a health care system that puts the poor at risk
In medical charts, the term “N.A.D.” (No Apparent Distress) is used for patients who appear stable. The phrase also aptly describes America’s medical system when it comes to treating the underprivileged. Medical students learn on the bodies of the poor—and the poor suffer from their mistakes.
Rachel Pearson confronted these harsh realities when she started medical school in Galveston, Texas. Pearson, herself from a working-class background, remains haunted by the suicide of a close friend, experiences firsthand the heartbreak of her own errors in a patient’s care, and witnesses the ruinous effects of a hurricane on a Texas town’s medical system.
In No Apparent Distress, she chronicles her experiences and the raging disparities in a system that favors the rich and the white. This is at once an indictment of American health care and a deeply moving tale of one doctor’s coming-of-age.
About the author
Rachel Pearson is an MD and PhD student at the University of Texas Medical Branch and the Institute for the Medical Humanities in Galveston. Her fiction, poetry, and essays have appeared in the Mid-American Review, the Texas Observer, and elsewhere.
Rebecca Gibel is an award-winning stage, television, and voice actress, who has narrated over fifty audiobooks in a wide variety of genres. She has worked across the country at theaters such as Trinity Rep, Cleveland Play House, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Intiman Theatre, and the Arden Theatre Company. She holds a BA from the College of William & Mary and an MFA in Acting from Brown University/Trinity Rep.
