Lightning Flowers
My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life
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Narrated by:
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Katherine E. Standefer
About this listen
This "utterly spectacular" book weighs the impact modern medical technology has had on the author's life against the social and environmental costs inevitably incurred by the mining that makes such innovation possible (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises).
What if a lifesaving medical device causes loss of life along its supply chain? That's the question Katherine E. Standefer finds herself asking one night after being suddenly shocked by her implanted cardiac defibrillator.
In this gripping, intimate memoir about health, illness, and the invisible reverberating effects of our medical system, Standefer recounts the astonishing true story of the rare diagnosis that upended her rugged life in the mountains of Wyoming and sent her tumbling into a fraught maze of cardiology units, dramatic surgeries, and slow, painful recoveries. As her life increasingly comes to revolve around the internal defibrillator freshly wired into her heart, she becomes consumed with questions about the supply chain that allows such an ostensibly miraculous device to exist. So she sets out to trace its materials back to their roots.
From the sterile labs of a medical device manufacturer in southern California to the tantalum and tin mines seized by armed groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to a nickel and cobalt mine carved out of endemic Madagascar jungle, Lightning Flowers takes us on a global reckoning with the social and environmental costs of a technology that promises to be lifesaving but is, in fact, much more complicated.
Deeply personal and sharply reported, Lightning Flowers takes a hard look at technological mythos, healthcare, and our cultural relationship to medical technology, raising important questions about our obligations to one another, and the cost of saving one life.
©2020 Katherine E. Standefer (P)2020 Little, Brown SparkListeners also enjoyed...
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“In Lightning Flowers, Katherine E. Standefer offers a full accounting of the cost of a single life, and it is nothing short of astonishing. She travels, literally, to both the brink of death and the edge of the world to discover exactly what it means to live. Her courage is palpable, on the page and in life. This book is utterly spectacular.” (Rachel Louise Snyder, author of No Visible Bruises and What We've Lost Is Nothing)
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“In her stunning debut, Katherine E. Standefer reveals how a single piece of supposedly lifesaving machinery has forever implicated her in ruinous global supply chains, how entire economies of extraction have come to reside deep within her body. With great clarity and resilience, Lightning Flowers invites us to become intimate with the moral and environmental calculus of our own lives.” (Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River)
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When their only child was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at the age of two, Maryanne O'Hara and her husband were told that Caitlin could live a long life or be dead in a matter of months. Thirty-one years later, Caitlin lost her battle with this devastating disease following an excruciating two-year wait on the transplant list and a last-minute race to locate a pair of healthy lungs. The sudden spiral of events left Maryanne in an existential crisis, searching to find an answer to the eternal question: Why we are here?
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I don't know who needs to read it...
- By H. Hill on 04-18-23
By: Maryanne O'Hara
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A Seaside Practice
- Tales of a Scottish Country Doctor
- By: Dr Tom Smith
- Narrated by: Dr Tom Smith
- Length: 6 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Heartwarming and gloriously eccentric, Dr Tom's stories capture the beauty of the Lowlands, the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants and the richly rewarding experiences of life as a Scottish country doctor.
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Engaging Memoir
- By Jean on 10-16-17
By: Dr Tom Smith
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He Came in with It
- A Portrait of Motherhood and Madness
- By: Miriam Feldman
- Narrated by: Ann Richardson
- Length: 11 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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In an idyllic Los Angeles neighborhood, where generations enjoy deep roots in old homes, the O’Rourke family fits right in. Miriam and Craig are both artists and their four children carry on the legacy. When their teenage son, Nick, is diagnosed with schizophrenia, a tumultuous decade ensues in which the family careens off the conventional course. Like the 10 Biblical plagues, they are hit by one catastrophe after another: violence, evictions, arrests, a suicide attempt, a near-drowning - even cancer and a brain tumor - play against the backdrop of a wild teenage bacchanal.
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So Beautifully Written
- By Michael on 08-01-22
By: Miriam Feldman
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The Heart
- By: Maylis de Kerangal, Sam Taylor - translator
- Narrated by: Steven Jay Cohen
- Length: 8 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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The Heart takes place over the 24 hours surrounding the resulting heart transplant, as life is taken from a young man and given to a woman close to death. In gorgeous, ruminative prose, it examines the deepest feelings of everyone involved as they navigate decisions of life and death.
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Wow! What a story!
- By Jan on 02-27-20
By: Maylis de Kerangal, and others
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Heartwood
- The Art of Living with the End in Mind
- By: Barbara Becker
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 4 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When her earliest childhood friend is diagnosed with a terminal illness, Becker sets off on a quest to immerse herself in what it means to be mortal. Can we live our lives more fully knowing some day we will die? With a keen eye toward that which makes life worth living, interfaith minister, mom, and perpetual seeker Barbara Becker recounts stories where life and death intersect in unexpected ways.
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The author’s compassion
- By Amazon Customer on 04-16-24
By: Barbara Becker
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Healing Hearts
- A Memoir of a Female Heart Surgeon
- By: Kathy Magliato
- Narrated by: Renée Raudman
- Length: 8 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Dr. Kathy Magliato is one of fewer than a dozen female heart surgeons practicing in the world today. She is also a member of an even more exclusive group - those surgeons who perform heart transplants. Healing Hearts is the story of the making of a surgeon who also calls herself a wife and mother.
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Healing Hearts
- By Jean on 01-14-12
By: Kathy Magliato
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God's Hotel
- A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
- By: Victoria Sweet
- Narrated by: Victoria Sweet
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.
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Great read
- By kayla solomon on 04-08-17
By: Victoria Sweet
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On Call in the Arctic
- A Doctor's Pursuit of Life, Love, and Miracles in the Alaskan Frontier
- By: Thomas J. Sims
- Narrated by: Sean Pratt
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Imagine a young doctor, trained in the latest medical knowledge and state-of-the-art equipment, suddenly transported back to one of the world’s most isolated and unforgiving environments - Nome, Alaska. That’s what happen to Dr. Sims. His plans to become a pediatric surgeon were drastically changed when, on the eve of being drafted into the army to serve as a MASH surgeon in Vietnam, he was offered a commission in the US Public Health for assignment in Anchorage, Alaska, where he was scheduled to act as chief of pediatrics at the Alaska Native Medical Center.
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Great Story, Great Narrator
- By Katie Lamb on 02-18-20
By: Thomas J. Sims
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When I Die I'm Going to Heaven 'Cause I've Spent My Time in Hell
- A Memoir of My Year As an Army Nurse in Vietnam
- By: Barbara Hesselman Kautz MSN RN
- Narrated by: Janet Metzger
- Length: 6 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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When she was 18, she joined the army to finance her nursing education. With less than six months of nursing experience, she was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam. True tales of the war that are by turns horrifying and humorous, told with an eye for detail, by a woman who was in the thick of it.
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Loved this
- By N. Thomas on 02-13-20
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Doctored
- The Disillusionment of an American Physician
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Sandeep Jauhar, an attending cardiologist, accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the outskirts of Queens. With a decade's worth of elite medical training behind him, he is eager to settle down and reap the rewards of countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted with sobering truths. Doctors' morale is low and getting lower.
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Frank, inside perspective on the follies of unintended consequences in medical reform
- By JW on 02-25-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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Last Night in the OR
- A Transplant Surgeon's Odyssey
- By: Bud Shaw
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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The 1980s marked a revolution in the field of organ transplants, and Bud Shaw, MD, who studied under Tom Starzl in Pittsburgh, was on the front lines. Now retired from active practice, Dr. Shaw relays gripping moments of anguish and elation, frustration and reward, despair and hope in his struggle to save patients. He reveals harshly intimate moments of his medical career.
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Expect alot of bad language!
- By Lynn L. on 08-10-16
By: Bud Shaw
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Blaze of Light
- The Inspiring True Story of Green Beret Medic Gary Beikirch, Medal of Honor Recipient
- By: Marcus Brotherton
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 8 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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After dawn the siege began. It was April 1, 1970, and Army Green Beret medic Gary Beikirch knew the odds were stacked against their survival. Some 10,000 enemy soldiers sought to obliterate the 12 American Special Forces troops and 400 indigenous fighters who stood fast to defend 2,300 women and children inside the village of Dak Seang. For his valor and selflessness during the ruthless siege, Beikirch would be awarded a Medal of Honor, the nation's highest and most prestigious military decoration.
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Hope for the future
- By Michael L. Jernigan on 04-09-20
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Finding Chika
- A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the 40-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says "no one in Haiti can help you with."
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BUY READ AND RECOMMEND THIS BOOK
- By The Birds. on 11-05-19
By: Mitch Albom
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Forty Signs of Rain
- Science in the Capital, Book 1
- By: Kim Stanley Robinson
- Narrated by: Peter Ganim, Kim Stanley Robinson
- Length: 12 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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The best-selling author of the classic Mars trilogy and The Years of Rice and Salt returns with a riveting new trilogy of cutting-edge science, international politics, and the real-life ramifications of global warming as they are played out in our nation's capital - and in the daily lives of those at the center of the action. Hauntingly realistic, here is a novel of the near future that is inspired by scientific facts already making headlines. BONUS AUDIO: Includes an exclusive introduction by author Kim Stanley Robinson.
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Its all
- By steve on 01-07-09
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Missing Parts
- By: Lucinda Berry
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 6 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up abandoned by her father and raised by a single mother, Celeste was determined to create the perfect family - but even perfect families have secrets. Her days are filled with a rewarding career, a devoted husband, and her four-year-old daughter. Celeste is the only one who knows the precarious house of cards her family is built upon - until the day her daughter falls critically ill. Then her world quickly spirals out of control, her secret threatening to destroy her marriage, family, reputation, and sanity.
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SPOILER ALERT. Sigh...
- By Kelly on 10-08-20
By: Lucinda Berry
What listeners say about Lightning Flowers
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- FSRasheed
- 11-19-20
Eye opening and heart wrenching
As a healthcare professional with a brother who is an electrophysiologist, I was intrigued to hear Katherine Standefer’s story as a glimpse into what my brother did for a living; What I got was so much more! As a physician myself, I am always in awe of what life is like “on the other side” for a patient and the impact things like the style in which physicians communicate make a difference in a patient’s life. So many times, my jaw dropped at how the author was left feeling after a physician did not make her feel like she was heard and how our medical system continues to fail patients in this way everyday. I was grateful that she brought to light the struggles getting healthcare is when one is not insured despite every effort to get insurance. There are so many parts to this story that brought me to tears and made me angry over our broken healthcare system that leaves pharmaceutical companies and hospital CEOs making millions and leaving patients and physicians struggling to be at the center of the story and the ability to be the best. In this book, I was able to hear her story loud and clear. We need to do better.
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55 people found this helpful
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- Bentley S. Davis
- 12-01-20
recommended for all interested in healthcare
This beautifully written memoir should be required reading for those interested in healthcare. While the author goes into detail into what is involved in the making of her medical device, the parts about the patient/physician/payor relationship was what moved me the most.
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12 people found this helpful
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- Jessica L.
- 12-07-20
startlingly beautiful and raw
The author delivers her story with a raw, sweet tenderness. Part memoir, part medical exposé, part ecological and anthropological journey. Ms Standefer's performance is strong and intimate, immediate. A story and viewpoint that will stay with me a very long time.
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21 people found this helpful
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- Charles D. Bentley
- 03-28-21
Must read true medical journey
Thank you having the courage to tell your story. An incredible indictment of the medical, insurance and mining industry wrapped up in the the authors own harrowing story. You owe it to yourself to read this compelling book. Best wishes to the author in life and with her health issues.
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- IowaGreyhound
- 03-27-21
A far reaching expose of medicine and technology
Exposes the challenges and failures of our medical system and the effects of mining to supply metals for today's life saving medical technologies. She helps you feel the frustration of how politics can affect access to insurance for many. She teaches you to mourn the loss of parts of our planet and to understand the failure of reserving parts of the rain forests to make up for mining companies destruction. You empathize with the peoples who no longer are allowed to access the forest and see their cultures and lifestyles destroyed by mining. The book ends in limbo along with our medical system, politics and our planet.
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- kungyakfu
- 03-17-21
So well written
I found this book amazing. I work in healthcare and have for 25 Years. My hear bleeds for this young woman on so many levels. I hope her life is long and happy. She truly deserves it. I cried when she described her negative experiences with healthcare professionals who don't listen and don't care. her research into how these devices are made was so well done.
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2 people found this helpful
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- lynn
- 05-02-21
Great personal story
K S is a brilliant writer and an exceptional reader. Her story is deep and intense. It is full of food for thought and for changing minds. I was changed by her story and her insights.
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- Jess
- 10-04-22
just couldn't get into it
I guess there's really not much more to say about this book for me except that I just couldn't get into it. that doesn't mean it wasn't particularly well written or that somebody else wouldn't like it. it just wasn't the book for me.
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- Oregon Girl
- 02-06-21
An amazing book!
A fascinating and deep dive into the author’s experience navigating a genetic heart condition, the healthcare system, and the global effects and ramifications of mining the minerals needed to create lifesaving heart devices. Personal, extremely well researched and written, and pleasantly narrated by the author.
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11 people found this helpful
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- L. W. LARSON
- 03-15-21
A life turned upside down, was it worth it? When is enuf enuf?
A confluence of good healthcare availability, true cost of technological advancements, the real cost to the nations we procure our minerals from and what it can mean to be a patient in our medical system. A heartfelt story brilliantly told. In our country we expect miracles from medicine and are pissed off when it doesn’t always go that way. In third world countries they are grateful when there is a good outcome that lets them live a little longer but they seem to accept the fact that we ALL DIE in the end.
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