Your Heart is the Size of Your Fist

Reviews

“Both an eye-opening account for Canadians wanting to understand the challenges facing refugees and a strong argument for refugee health, including mental health, to receive dedicated treatment and funding .… Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist is also about the person in the white coat: a mother trying to find balance between the personal and professional, an a doctor whose patients expand her notions of what a doctor should be.” —Jade Colbert, Globe and Mail

“Your Heart Is the Size of Your Fist is a pleasure from start to finish: timely and timeless, intimate and wise, compelling and informative. Scholtens offers an insider's view of doctoring, powerful stories of refugees creating new lives in North America, and a personal account of balancing motherhood, medicine, and self.” —Louise Aronson, founding co-director, University of California San Francisco Medical Humanities and award-winning author of A History of the Present Illness

“Scholtens’ memoir is a transformative exploration of a brave, young doctor from a stable, nurtured environment coming of age in a healthcare system unprepared for this growing and struggling underprivileged group who arrive on Canada’s doorstep with so little in the way of material assets yet so rich in experiences. Skillfully through story, she portrays challenges refugees face when adapting to life in BC and her own frustration with how little she believes she helps them. The reader witnesses her discovery and reaction to stories of wounded survivors, from worlds she can barely conceive. Her loving family she portrays as saving her from delving too far into the trauma that she witnesses. Yet she struggles with the competing demands of motherhood and medicine as the two threaten to merge into one, as mother to mother she celebrates with them.” —Dr. Maureen Mayhew, clinical professor, University of British Columbia School of Population and Public Health

“Impressive—a wonderful read but also a deft exploration of multiple current concerns, from how we care for refugees to how doctors balance their professional and personal obligations and care for themselves.” —Marcia Day Childress, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Medical Education, University of Virginia School of Medicine

“Captivating … Several stories highlight what being a physician entails, including being a healer, advocate, and educator, and often going above and beyond for your patients.… I urge anyone interested in primary care or refugee health, along with anyone who would like an honest view about providing culturally sensitive health care, to give this book a read.” —Yvonne Sin, MD, British Columbia Medical Journal