Wrongful Death: A Memoir

by Sandra M. Gilbert

“A loving eulogy . . . a powerful and wrenching book.” ― Los Angeles Times On February 10, 1991, Elliot Gilbert, a sixty-year-old professor of English, checked into a major medical center for routine prostate surgery. Twenty-four hours later, he was pronounced dead in the recovery room. To this day, no one from the hospital has told his family how or why he died. In Wrongful Death his widow has produced a searingly frank account of one family's experience with a kind of medical disaster that occurs surprisingly often but is all-too-rarely discussed in a political arena dominated by concerns about the escalating costs of malpractice insurance. As her story unfolds, Sandra Gilbert describes the numbing shock into which she and her children were plunged by her husband's inexplicable death as well as the stages of grief they endured as they struggled to come to terms with their loss. But her major focus is on the process of discovery through which, with the help of friends and lawyers, they began to learn something about what had happened to Elliot. What are the implications of such a medical tragedy for the deceased and for his survivors? How does it feel to confront the possibility that a loved one has suffered what the law calls a "wrongful death"? As she examines the bewildering complexity of the legal, social, and medical questions surrounding "adverse events" like the one that killed her husband, Gilbert shows how vulnerable we all are to the power of the health-care establishment.

Genres: Memoir

380 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

Sandra M. Gilbert was an American literary critic and poet who published in the fields of feminist literary criticism, feminist theory, and psychoanalytic criticism. She was best known for her collaborative critical work with Susan Gubar, with whom she co-authored, among other works, The Madwoman in the Attic (1979). Madwoman in the Attic is widely recognized as a text central to second-wave feminism. She was Professor Emerita of English at the University of California, Davis.
Gilbert lived in Berkeley, California, and lived, until 2008, in Paris, France. Her husband, Elliot L. Gilbert, was chair of the Department of English at University of California, Davis, until his death in 1991. She also had a long-term relationship with David Gale, mathematician at University of California, Berkeley, until his death in 2008.

Reviews

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gilbert’s memoir of her husband’s surgery and consequent death is a wrenching look at what is wrong with our medical system. This book was a perfect confluence of interests for me-a detailed story of medical negligence, written by a remarkable poet. The writing is fluid. Gilbert dates sections, which avoids confusion as she segues back and forth in time.

Her shock, disbelief, and grief is well depicted. Her inability to “accept” that her husband is dead is an accurate portrayal of how grief turns one’s life inside out. We know on an intellectual level that our loved one is gone, but on a visceral level our body refuses to believe. Gilbert shows us her most vulnerable self in her descriptions of being unable to even get out of bed, to talk on the phone, to write thank-you notes.

Gilbert details the reality of pursuing a malpractice claim. Not only would she be suing the medical center, but also the regents of the university where she earned her living. She shares the frustration that despite the fact that her attorney told the family they may never find out what happened, she expected at some point to discover exactly where the medical system failed her husband.

Books like this should be required reading in med school; there are several research studies which show that health care providers who disclose errors and adverse events to family members are sued far less often. It’s the atmosphere of secrecy that leads family members to the decision that somebody has to be held accountable.

[Anne Green · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incisive, compelling and disturbing account of the author's experience of medical negligence that caused her husband's untimely death. Brilliantly written and meticulously researched, it's essential reading for anyone who has had the misfortune to endure a similar ordeal.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

Couldn't put it down. It's a memoir about the "wrongful death" of her husband who went into "basic" surgery but didn't come out. It soon became clear that the doctors were stonewalling her and her family so as to not reveal what really happened. In other works, the doctors were hiding their mistakes.

It's especially disturbing because Gilbert and her husband were both professors at U.C. Davis at the time--and the surgery took place at U.C. Davis Medical Center. If elite people with insider knowledge who are operated on by their colleagues are treated this way, what hope is there for us regular folk?

But the book is not all gloom and doom. She reminds us that we need to be staunch advocates, always on the offense when our loved ones are receiving medical care. Don't "trust." Know.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a fine example of how medical narrative is a great tool in exposign negligence and malpractice to the public. A great story for patients and physians alike.