If I Get to Five: What Children Can Teach Us About Courage and Character

by Fred Epstein, Josh Horwitz

Overview

A world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon shares the lessons of courage, compassion, and resilience that he's learned from his exceptional young patients

If I Get to Five is a one-of-a-kind book by a one-of-a-kind human being. The medical world knows him as Fred Epstein, M.D., the neurosurgeon who pioneered life-saving procedures for previously inoperable tumors in children. His patients and their families know him simply as Dr. Fred, the "miracle man" who has extended them both a healing hand and an open heart.

"I simply can't accept the idea of kids dying," is how Epstein explains his commitment to saving patients. As a child, he had to overcome severe learning disabilities to realize his dream of becoming a doctor. Later, as the world's leading pediatric neurosurgeon, he did whatever it took to rescue children that other doctors had given up on.

Epstein credits his young patients as his most important teachers. "We tend to think of children as fragile, little people," he writes. "To me, they're giants." If I Get to Five relates the unforgettable experiences he's shared with children-lessons in courage, compassion, love, and hope-that we can all draw on to overcome adversity at any stage of life. In If I Get to Five, Epstein meditates on these lessons at a time when they parallel his own experiences, as he recovers from a near-fatal head injury.

If I Get to Five is a riveting profile of courage and compassion. No one who reads this remarkable book will ever look at children-or adversity-in the same way.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781466855274
Publisher:	Holt, Henry & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	07/02/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	205
File size:	272 KB

About the Author

Fred Epstein, M.D., is the founding director of the Institute for
Neurology and Neurosurgery at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City. He has served as president of the International
Society of Pediatric Neurosurgery and president of the American Society of Pediatric Neurosurgery. Epstein lives with his wife and children in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Joshua Horwitz is the president of Living Planet Books, a book packaging firm that specializes in health, psychology, and spirituality titles. He is the co-author of Wrestling with Angels and lives in Washington, D.C.

Read an Excerpt

From If I Get to Five:
Surgeons have a tendency to compartmentalize their professional and emotional lives. We’re trained to believe that we can best serve our patients by remaining objective professionals. With so much fear and anxiety swirling around our patients and their families, it’s easy to imagine that responding to all their emotional needs would be overwhelming, and might even erode one’s professional judgment.

But my colleagues and I have reached a paradoxical conclusion: the closer we’ve gotten to our patients and their families, the more strength and inspiration we’ve been able to draw from them. And by keeping our hearts, as well as our minds, open to our young patients, we’ve learned professional and personal lessons that eluded us earlier in our careers.

I used to think that courage meant taking on the toughest cases, being the guy who dared to make the life-and-death judgment calls in the operating room. I now know that holding a child’s hand while he undergoes chemotherapy can be a lot scarier than holding his life in my hands during an operation.

Editorial Reviews

To shake hands with Dr. Fred Epstein is to be touched by an angel in a scrub suit.” —Steve Dunleavy, New York Post

“A magnificent tribute to human resiliency and hopefulness. From Dr. Epstein's portrayals of children who have found meaning amid horror to his own superbly interwoven autobiography of a boyhood marred by academic failure, we see the emergence of a truly great man. Readers will feel energized by this remarkable portrayal of life's uphill battles.” —Mel Levine, M.D., author of A Mind at a Time

From the Publisher