Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic

by Kate Scannell

Based on journals written during her five years as the clinical director of AIDS programs in Oakland, CA, Death of the Good Doctor is a richly detailed chronicle of the author's compassionate relationships with individual patients through whom she filters the vast complexities of the epidemic. These beautiful, often difficult, and sometimes humorous engagements with her patients were the substance of Kate Scannell's life during her years on the AIDS ward.

This is not the standard narrative of a physician acting upon or commenting about her patients from an observer's or authority figure's viewpoint. Diagnosed with ovarian cancer several years after leaving the AIDS ward, Scannell writes from the point of view of both a physician and a woman facing the prospects of her own mortality.

Genres: Medicine, Medical, Nonfiction, Memoir

194 pages, Paperback

First published September 20, 1999

About the author

Kate Scannell is a physician who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has published extensively in professional and lay media. Between 2000 and 2014, she wrote a medical opinion column for several Bay Area newspapers and their digital outlets, including The Oakland Tribune, The Mercury News, and The East Bay Times. Her columns explored the ethical and sociopolitical dimensions of American health care and medical practice.

Informed by her experiences as the medical director for one of the country's first hospital AIDS wards, she wrote the memoir Death of the Good Doctor: Lessons from the Heart of the AIDS Epidemic (Cleis Press, 1999). It recounts her coming-of-age as a female physician while caring for people with AIDS, most of whom would die, during the early epidemic years (1985-1990). Years after her memoir went out-of-print, it was reissued in electronic format (2010) and later resurrected into print (2012; and with photos, 2018).

Kate also wrote the novel Flood Stage, a collection of twenty interrelated stories about people living in a diverse rural community in Northern California whose lives are upturned while torrential rains overfill the local river. When flood stage arrives and apocalyptic flooding ensues, residents of this tight-knit community must make swift and painful decisions. In moments of urgent reckoning, their unique personal histories are acted out on center stage, while a universal human trauma unfolds.

In September 2018, Kate published Immortal Wounds: A Doctor Nora Kelly Mystery. This first-in-series mystery introduces us to crack diagnostician Dr. Nora Kelly and her colleagues at Oakland City Hospital. We begin a normal workday with Nora—as normal as it can be after the traumatic loss of her family two years ago. She steps into the ER, struggling with grief and self-doubt about her ability to continue practicing medicine. But there’s a corpse waiting in the administrative suite, and havoc quickly descends upon her and the hospital staff. Multiple colleagues die under suspicious circumstances. The mystery behind the mayhem draws Nora back into life and work, and her once-renowned diagnostic acumen resurrects under extreme peril. At the same time, her self-redemptive quest to solve the mystery unearths a deeply personal and painful question that reaches into the core of who she is and what she believes.

The second-in-series, Lethal Control, followed in 2021. Nora Kelly is stunned when an anonymous blue patient is abandoned at her ER. When other patients with baffling symptoms also appear, she begins to suspect environmental toxins as the cause. But to prove that and safeguard others in the community, she must outwit a powerful corporate adversary. Themes of environmental justice, homelessness, human trafficking, and immigration run through the mystery.

In the third book, Double Fault, (December, 2024), Nora is shocked and perplexed when she loses a young, healthy patient during a routine surgery at Oakland City Hospital. Though the cause of his death is unclear, Nora is blamed by his devastated and litigious parents, a hostile colleague with a covert agenda, and social media commentators who post demonizing videos of her. To survive the nightmare and redeem herself, she must solve the mystery of the puzzling death. The coroner’s report leads her to wonder if her patient had been receiving risky stem-cell injections, but to prove that she must navigate a messy entanglement with her estranged mentor. She must also break through the parents’ wall of secrecy to uncover their unwitting role in the tragedy. Drawing from her own experience of losing a child, Nora fits the puzzle pieces together to expose a complex scheme involving deceit, betrayal, stem cells, blackmail, bribery, and a college-admissions scandal.

Reviews

[bekah · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t remember the last book that made me cry, but I don’t think I will be able to forget this one. I read this and I think of my mother.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal and Genuine

I am sorry to have come to the end of this book -- it was that good! In a sense I feel strange saying that because, after all, who would want a book about the early years of AIDS to keep going? I don't have AIDS and I don't believe I have ever known anyone that does so the book doesn't really apply to me personally. Or does it? For don't we all live and then die, suffer illness, loss, ponder our lives and the things we've learned, fallen in love and said our hellos and goodbyes, among other things? In the end I think we all want the same things and that is: to have made our "mark" on the world and at least a handful of the people in it, to have lived rather than existed, to have as few regrets as possible and avoid suffering, to have loved others well and to know beyond a shadow of doubt that we are loved as we take our last breath hopefully without pain and with the comfort of our loved ones holding our hands.
Dr Kate Scannell is a compassionate and excellent physician and human being as well as a wonderful author! I really enjoyed her writing style and how it is professional but feels like you are spending time with a good friend. I empathized with these early patients/pioneers who had AIDS and were admitted to an AIDS ward in California, some estranged from their families who had zero understanding and limited tolerance for their child or family member not only coming out as gay or lesbian but then at some point having been diagnosed as having AIDS which was basically a death sentence back then, measured in months.
The stories were heartbreaking but also enlightening and strong in many cases. They spoke and lived their truth and the "good doctor" met them with truths of her own and compassionate care. One scene that really touched me in a deep and profound way was the story of "Kenny" at the end of his life and the "gift" Dr Scannell gave him. It was breathtaking and I wish ALL doctors were so gentle and compassionate! My mom passed away 17 months ago and I STILL struggle with what a doctor that was assigned to her did. Im not a litigious person but I did consider it. Nothing can bring her back though...
I only hope that Dr Kate is first and foremost still alive and doing well or is at least stable and that she keeps writing!

[vanessa johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Humbling

The work carried out by Dr. Scannell and others like her was, and is amazing.

To devote yourself to people who (at the time) had no chance of recovery, who were often on the edge of society, facing discrimination and worse, is truly heroic. At a time when the mention of AIDS engendered everything from alienation to disgust and sometimes violence, the work undertaken by healthcare professionals was brave, compassionate and inspiring.

The stories in her book are told with humour, humanity and ultimately love and we are all the better for reading them.

[Kathryn Castles · Rating 5 out of 5]

Devastating, beautiful, odd little book. Perfect in itself and yet I wished there were more. Full of extraordinary people, including herself. Every story made me cry but the overall feeling is of tenderness and sweetness. Interested to read more from her

[Kate Seader · Rating 5 out of 5]

Through this physicians experiences we see the humanity of the epidemic.

[Samantha Norman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully written

Fascinating and moving front line account of one doctor’s experience of the AIDS epidemic. Although traumatic it is very readable

[Jake]

I read this one as part of what is essentially and "exchange program" between myself and my girlfriend. I agreed to read this, which she marks as one of her favorite books of all time, and she agreed to read the Lord of the Rings. Frankly, I got the easier end of that bargain!

Still, I cannot find fault with her for liking this book, as it's actually a very good piece of work.

The book chronicles Dr. Scannell's experiences working in an AIDS ward starting in the early 1980's. There was little understanding of the nature of the virus, and not terribly much understanding of the people who were infected by it. In dealing with her patients, Scannell ends up confronting a lot of her beliefs about medicine, mortality, and existence as a whole.

This is not a linear narrative: instead, it's a series of short vignette's, each focusing on a different patient and Dr. Scannell's personal experiences with or of that patient and the people around them. As with all books that are collections of short stories, some of the stories are more powerful, more horrific, or more engaging than others, but they are all written in an interesting and engaging fashion. Scannell writes smoothly and honestly about her experiences, in a way that honors the suffering her patients have gone through, while at the same time not descending into melodrama. Even at the end, when Scannell finds herself faced the possibility of her own death, the writing remains clear, lucid, and engaging.

Not, perhaps, the most cheerful book on my shelves, but one definitely worth reading and thinking about.

[Carolyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Living in the midwest in the mid-80s limited my exposure to the early years of the AIDS epidemic. This shares the first hand experiences of the patients and clinicians caring for them. I had forgotten the hatred and intolerance...politicians who felt that HIV positive people weren't worthy of ANY healthcare treatment or food and any means to sustain their life. They were the "lepers" of modern times and people forgot that these patients were still someone's brother, sister, son, daughter, cousin, or parent suffering a terrifying, painful and terminal disease.
It is well worth reading and will haunt you long after you finish the last page.

[Jenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember the news reports when I was young about this horrifying disease that only effected people I didn't know until seeing another report about a young boy named Ryan White who was only three years older than I was. Suddenly my world became entrenched with horror stories of ostracized people who suffered so much with so much hate directed at them.

This was a beautiful book from a woman who was in the thick of it and witnessed so much sadness, death and hopelessness and spoke about these beautiful moments with people who left this world too soon.

Such a wonderful book.

[laaaaames · Rating 4 out of 5]

RESEARCH BOOK!

I actually really enjoyed this as a read, as dark and sad as it could be. This put a very human face on the AIDS epidemic but also on the patient care portion of it, which is a side I guess I forget about.

I think I'm about a third through my AIDS books which is pretty good. For those of you keeping score at home???

(read: 14)

[Yorgos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of non-fiction narratives about treating AIDS patients in the early days of the epidemic, and about helping some of them die well. Some parts are overwritten but the stories and the author's experiences are so powerful it doesn't matter. The Loving Someone to Death story blew me away.

[Diana Cook · Rating 3 out of 5]

So incredibly sad. Each chapter is another death. Almost too much to read.