Medical Treatment & Procedures – Page 13

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate—a life and a role that she has never challenged… until now.

Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister—and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the sister she loves.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism & ableist language (r slur)
Alcohol abuse mentioned
Medical treatment & procedures, including surgery & organ transplants
Blood depiction
Cancer (theme)
Death of a child
Death of a sister
Fire
Car accident

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

An Unkindness of Ghosts by Rivers Solomon

Odd-mannered, obsessive, withdrawn, Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, as they accuse, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remained of her world, save for stories told around the cookfire.

Aster lives in the low-deck slums of the HSS Matilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations, the Matilda has ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster, who they consider to be less than human… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableism
Misogyny
Homomisia
Transmisia & misgendering
Racism & racial slurs
Slavery
Graphic rape
Sexual assault mentioned
Child sexual abuse implied
Suicide & attempted suicide
Self harm
Abortion
Forced sterilization
Medical procedures, including graphic surgery & amputation
Needles
Death of a child
Death of a parent
Police brutality
Torture
Lynching
Fire
Captivity

Scars Like Wings by Erin Stewart

Scars Like Wings by Erin Stewart

Ava Lee has lost everything there is to lose: Her parents. Her best friend. Her home. Even her face. She doesn’t need a mirror to know what she looks like–she can see her reflection in the eyes of everyone around her.

A year after the fire that destroyed her world, her aunt and uncle have decided she should go back to high school. Be “normal” again. Whatever that is. Ava knows better. There is no normal for someone like her. And forget making friends–no one wants to be seen with the Burned Girl, now or ever… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Attempted suicide
Burns
Medical procedures
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a parent recounted
Car accident mentioned
Fire
Bullying

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott

Five Feet Apart by Rachael Lippincott with Mikki Daughtry & Tobias Iaconis

Stella Grant likes to be in control—even though her totally out of control lungs have sent her in and out of the hospital most of her life. At this point, what Stella needs to control most is keeping herself away from anyone or anything that might pass along an infection and jeopardize the possibility of a lung transplant. Six feet apart. No exceptions.

The only thing Will Newman wants to be in control of is getting out of this hospital. He couldn’t care less about his treatments, or a fancy new clinical drug trial. Soon, he’ll turn eighteen and then he’ll be able to unplug all these machines and actually go see the world, not just its hospitals… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Terminal illness (cystic fibrosis)
Hospitalisation
Medical treatment & procedures
Death of a child

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Catherine House is a school of higher learning like no other. Hidden deep in the woods of rural Pennsylvania, this crucible of reformist liberal arts study with its experimental curriculum, wildly selective admissions policy, and formidable endowment, has produced some of the world’s best minds. For those lucky few selected, tuition, room, and board are free. But acceptance comes with a price. Students are required to give the House three years—summers included—completely removed from the outside world. Family, friends… Read more.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Slut shaming
Suicide
Alcohol consumption & abuse
Emesis
Medical examination
Human & animal medical experimentation
Needles
Grief & loss depiction
Death of a sister mentioned
Death of a best friend & classmate
Captivity & forced isolation
Animal injury & illness

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnball

No Gods, No Monsters by Cadwell Turnball

One October morning, Laina gets the news that her brother was shot and killed by Boston cops. But what looks like a case of police brutality soon reveals something much stranger. Monsters are real. And they want everyone to know it.

As creatures from myth and legend come out of the shadows, seeking safety through visibility, their emergence sets off a chain of seemingly unrelated events. Members of a local werewolf pack are threatened into silence. A professor follows a missing friend’s trail of bread crumbs to a mysterious secret society. And a young boy with unique abilities seeks refuge in a pro-monster organization with secrets of its own. Meanwhile, more people start disappearing, suicides and hate crimes increase, and protests erupt globally, both for and against the monsters.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Sexual abuse
Domestic abuse
Drug use
Gun violence
Police brutality

Body Language by A.K. Turner

Body Language by A.K. Turner

Camden mortuary assistant Cassie Raven has pretty much seen it all. But this is the first time she’s come face to face with someone she knows on the slab. Someone she cared about. Her friend and mentor, Mrs E.

Deeply intuitive and convinced that she can pick up the last thoughts of the dead, Cassie senses that there must be more to the ruling of an accidental death. Is her grief making her see things that aren’t there, or is her intuition right, and there’s something more sinister to her friend’s death than the ME thinks? Harbouring an innate distrust of the police, Cassie sets out to investigate and deliver justice to the woman who saved her life.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Domestic abuse mentioned
Drug abuse & overdose
Descriptions of autopsies
Murder

Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd

Unnatural Causes by Richard Shepherd

As the UK’s top forensic pathologist, Dr Richard Shepherd has spent a lifetime uncovering the secrets of the dead. When death is sudden or unexplained, it falls to Shepherd to establish the cause. Each post-mortem is a detective story in its own right – and Shepherd has performed over 23,000 of them. Through his skill, dedication and insight, Dr Shepherd solves the puzzle to answer our most pressing question: how did this person die?

From serial killer to natural disaster, ‘perfect murder’ to freak accident, Shepherd takes nothing for granted in pursuit of truth. And while he’s been involved in some of the most high-profile cases of recent times, it’s often the less well known encounters that prove the most perplexing, intriguing and even bizarre. In or out of the public eye, his evidence has put killers behind bars, freed the innocent and turned open-and-shut cases on their heads.

But a life in death, bearing witness to some of humanity’s darkest corners, exacts a price and Shepherd doesn’t flinch from counting the cost to him and his family.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Rape
Graphic descriptions of autopsies
Graphic descriptions of dead bodies
Death of a parent
Death of a child
Murder
Knife violence and stabbing
Car accidents
Terrorist attacks
Deaths in custody

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? And Other Questions About Dead Bodies by Caitlin Doughty

Everyone has questions about death. In Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs?, best-selling author and mortician Caitlin Doughty answers the most intriguing questions she’s ever received about what happens to our bodies when we die. In a brisk, informative, and morbidly funny style, Doughty explores everything from ancient Egyptian death rituals and the science of skeletons to flesh-eating insects and the proper depth at which to bury your pet if you want Fluffy to become a mummy. Now featuring an interview with a clinical expert on discussing these issues with young people—the source of some of our most revealing questions about death—Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? confronts our common fear of dying with candid, honest, and hilarious facts about what awaits the body we leave behind.

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Suicide mentioned
Graphic dead bodies, central theme
Funeral-related preperation of bodies discussed in detail
Medical conditions discussed
Medical procedures discussed
Death, central theme
Murder mentioned
Torture mentioned
Death by drowning mentioned
Animal death
Graphic animal dead bodies
Death of a pet discussed
Animal testing and other animal cruelty mentioned
Grave desecration

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

Pet by Akwaeke Emezi

There are no more monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. With doting parents and a best friend named Redemption, Jam has grown up with this lesson all her life. But when she meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colours and claws, who emerges from one of her mother’s paintings and a drop of Jam’s blood, she must reconsider what she’s been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption’s house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question — How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist?

Goodreads • The Story Graph

Trigger & Content Warnings:

Ableist language
Coming out themes mentioned
Child sexual abuse (central theme, not on-page or described)
Child abuse
Surgery mentioned
Hormone replacement therapy mentioned