Intensive Care: True Stories of Healing, Heartache and Hope from Inside Irish Children's Medicine

IT ALL RESTS ON A STORY. THIS IS ONE YOU WON'T FORGET. In these pages, Dr Suzanne Crowe opens the doors to a world few ever see: the charged and fragile realm of paediatric intensive care. From her earliest days as a junior doctor to becoming one of Ireland's leading specialists, she shares extraordinary stories of the children she's treated, the families who've loved them and the moments when life hung by a thread. But this is not only a book about medicine. It is about how the healing begins with a doctor bearing witness and being present. It is about what it means to offer hope when certainty is gone. At its heart lies the searing personal loss of Suzanne's own child, Beatrice - a grief that reshaped her as a doctor and as a person. Written with honesty and a clinician's eye for detail, this is a story of deep compassion and unflinching truth. At a time of turmoil for children's medicine in Ireland, we are reminded that the real work lies not just in saving lives, but in holding space for them - with courage, humility and love. A profoundly human memoir from a doctor whose work has touched many lives.

About the Author :
Suzanne Crowe grew up in Bray, County Wicklow, and studied medicine at Trinity College Dublin. She went on to train in Anaesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine and practices mostly with children. She is currently a consultant in paediatric intensive care medicine at Children's Health Ireland in Crumlin, Ireland's largest acute paediatric teaching hospital, and president of the Irish Medical Council. She has a passionate interest in children's rights, especially in terms of health and social care, sits on several charity boards including LGBT Ireland and Cheshire Ireland, and has a regular column in the Irish Independent in which she writes about healthcare and child-related topics. She is a widow with five children, one of whom - Beatrice - died shortly after she was born. Beatrice was Suzanne's major inspiration to work in intensive care for children. Suzanne lives in Dublin and Intensive Care is her first book.

Review :
Crowe writes with breathtaking matter of factness .. Her account of her slow emergence from all-encompassing grief makes for harrowing reading Crowe is powerful in her exactitude about the fear and uncertainty a career in medicine creates and the many times she wanted to quit ... gruelling truth of what it takes to save the lives of all involved