Patient by Patient is the memoir of a young doctor, fresh from residency, as she explores the joys and frustrations of beginning her medical practice. As she strives to help her patients face a range of challenges from the humorous to the profoundly devastating she learns that while medical school gave her an M.D., treating patients has made her a doctor.
At the same time she is working with her patients she is also struggling with illness in her own family. Through her shifting perspectives of doctor, daughter, and granddaughter, she contents with the process of dying, the experience of grief, and the buoyancy of the human spirit.
Dr. Transue began chronicling her experiences in her memoir of residency, On Call, and she continues her education here but the source of her knowledge about love, loss, hope and healing are not medical texts or professors but the patients she treats and gets to know – those she helps to wellness and those she must let go.