The Language of Cells: A Doctor and His Patients

Read an Excerpt

Working Through Images
As a surgical pathologist for more than twenty-five years, Spencer Nadler was not content with the distance between his lab and the patient. Meeting with those whose diseased cells he has diagnosed, he offers them a rare understanding.

Working Through Images, Part 2
I retrieve all her breast and lymph-node slides from the file and move her chair opposite mine. With effort, pain maybe, she leans across the desk to peer through the alternate set of eyepieces on my two-headed microscope.

As a surgical pathologist for more than twenty-five years, Spencer Nadler was not content with the distance between his lab and the patient. Meeting with those whose diseased cells he has diagnosed, he offers them a rare understanding.

Hanna Baylan is a woman as determined as he is to confront the cancer cells biopsied from her breast. Comille, a young boy with Sickle Cell anemia, has frequent racking pain, but doesn't let it interfere with his gusto for life. And 91-year old-conductor Mehli Mehta inspires comparison between the cellular rhythms that threaten his heart and those that govern his work.

In these intimate, lyrical portraits of people and their cells, Nadler brings a unique clarity and compassion to medicine.

Spencer Nadler, M.D., has practiced surgical pathology for more than twenty-five years in Southern California. His essays have appeared in Harper's, The Massachusetts Review, Cross Currents, The Missouri Review, The American Scholar, and Reader's Digest. The Language of Cells is his first book..

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