Ting and I

"Doug Cooper's homage to his wife ... is a story about the power of love to overcome cultural taboos, through persistence and patience, and to triumph over a near-fatal illness and daunting physical disability. It is also a celebration of optimism over despair by two people passionately committed to each other 'for better or worse, in good times and bad, in sickness and in health.....'

Tina entered the critical care unit of Orange Regional Medical Center because of a catastrophic illness. I was part of the intensivist team providing her care through her 100-day hospital ordeal....

Doug tirelessly directed the attention of the health care team to seemingly trivial aspects of her care, asking detailed questions and demanding satisfactory answers, even occasionally suggesting changes in her care plan.... What I did not initially realize was that Doug's persistence was improving his wife's care. I began to marvel at the tenderness he lavished on Tina....

Eventually, Tina left the hospital and went home to a cocoon of nurses, catheters, and ventilators, and I saw her several times a year in my office. Their mutual affection seemed to grow stronger with time and was uplifting to watch, given the relentless burdens Tina's illness imposed on both of them.

Doug dedicates this book to Tina, his "good soldier," but in a larger sense it is also a tribute to his powerful advocacy for her survival. I believe their love saved them both.

My participation in Tina's care made me a better physician and provided me with one of the most rewarding experiences of my professional career."

From the Foreword by Richard F. Walker, MD, FCCP.

This is a love story that is also a challenge to the idea that others can correctly judge a patient's eventual quality of life in order to determine the degree of medical intervention that is appropriate in a life-threatening situation.

This is a tribute to a brave woman and to all of those who helped her during her most desperate time and thereafter. It is a tribute, also, to the power of love between a man and a woman that has sustained them through separation, societal prejudice, and her seven years as a quadriplegic, on a ventilator, and fed through a gastric tube, with round-the-clock nursing care at home.

Love and marriage, family, friendships, trust, faith, hope, finances and health insurance, home nursing care management --- all are covered, often with a touch of humor.