"This beautifully written biography charts the life of Dr. Cynthia J. MacKay, a wife, a mother, a surgeon, and a lifelong activist campaigning against the cruel, painful, damaging invasive corrective eye surgery LASIK. It is written with modesty. It is engaging, witty, and sometimes painful to read as it describes the discrimination, smear campaigns, and brutal conduct of her peers and others who have tried to ruin her in their own act of self-preservation. Cynthia battles through it all, with dignity, determination, and an abundance of wit, humor and humility.
"I was utterly enchanted by this wonderful biography. The style is so lively I could not bear to put it down. It is full of generous insights into other people. The focus on how a girl acquires the skills she will need as a surgeon adds suspense ." Ann (Nanno) C. Bienstock, Author, "Stories"Cynthia has dedicated her life to healing sick eyes. After retiring from practice, she threw herself into a crusade to tell the truth about LASIK. She authored a book, "The Unsightly Truth of Laser Vision Correction: LASIK Surgery Makes Healthy Eyes Sick", written with the late Morris Waxler (former head of the FDA committee that approved LASIK), Paula Cofer (one of millions of LASIK-damaged patients) and Ed Boshnick (optometrist).
Cynthia welcomes you on this journey, through her life, the ups, the downs, the sublime, and at times the ridiculous. You will find yourself laughing, and at the same time crying, but in the end you will be amazed at the courage, strength and determination that made her the successful woman she is today.
Review - "OUR VERDICT: GET IT""A retired eye surgeon looks back on her remarkable life and career.
MacKay, who was born in 1942, begins her autobiography with an extensive overview of her girlhood and young adulthood in the ’40s and early ’50s, when there were scarcely any examples of people living the life she’d go on to lead: “The only female doctor I knew was my aunt, who had a part-time psychiatry practice.” She graduated from Harvard University in 1964, married her attorney husband Malcolm, had two children, and eventually entered medical school in 1973. She went on to become resident and to specialize in eye care—specifically, retinal surgery—and she includes plenty of reflections on the profession: “Good surgeons never rush. They have no sense of urgency,” she notes. “They keep up a steady, leisurely pace. They appear to be doing very little.” This part of her recollection also features accounts of frequent clashes with the institutional sexism of the medical world; in one such incident, an anesthesiologist loudly and condescendingly asked her, “How soon are you going to be finished?”—a question, she rightly notes, that would never have been asked of a male surgeon. The strongest element in her book’s final section is her account of her 30-year fight against the popular laser-assisted eye surgery called LASIK, which makes for the most passionate reading in an otherwise genial book. She writes that complications resulting from this type of surgery are “multiple, disastrous, untreatable, and permanent,” including lifelong pain, disability, and even blindness. The main weakness of the book, though, is the lack of balance between the personal and professional. She writes energetically and engagingly about both parts of her life, but the minute details of the author’s childhood (such as the fact that her grandmother served stewed prunes) are nowhere near as interesting as her experiences as a woman forging a career in a male-dominated profession or her critiques of the most popular form of eye surgery. Whether she’s discussing her time as a medical resident, as a surgeon, or as a professor at Columbia University, her working life is unfailingly compelling"
"An engaging, if slightly uneven, doctor’s memoir."
- Kirkus Reviews
