Book Review - Crossings: A Doctor-Soldier’s Story by Jon Kerstetter

In times of war, an infantryman’s best friend is said to be his rifle. But consideration should be given the combat surgeon, too.

Combat surgeons are responsible for emergency medical care on the battlefield, providing the basic duties of a physician while the battle is ongoing, so that the wounded can safely be evacuated to the closest military facility for additional care.

Jon Kerstetter was one of those combat surgeons. He enrolled in medical school at the age of 34 to pursue his boyhood dream of becoming a doctor. 

Managing critical patients was his passion, but emergency civilian medicine had become stale and predictable to him. He felt his talents, and the challenge he was seeking, could best take place on a battlefield.

“Crossings: A Doctor-Soldier’s Story,” is Kerstetter’s inspiring, transformational story that takes the reader from his life as a child living on an Indian reservation to his earning advanced degrees in business and saving lives on the battlefield.

It then shifts into the challenges he faced after suffering a stroke and undergoing the painful metamorphosis from warrior healer to dependent patient.

Kerstetter’s story begins on the Oneida Indian Reservation in Wisconsin, where he hung out at his mother’s “drugstore,” which he describes as a small, poorly stocked rural store that sold over-the-counter medications, veterinary supplies and a limited amount of sundries and groceries. 

He was the youngest of three children whose parents divorced shortly after he was born.

While in elementary school, Kerstetter became inspired to study medicine. Unfortunately, his mother only had a fifth-grade education and was unable to advise him on how to pursue his dreams of a medical degree. 

He describes how years later, the Native American academic adviser in college, a Navajo Indian with a master’s degree in social work, told him that Native students did not do well in the hard sciences, so instead, he pursued a business degree.

Read the original article on: http://www.mysanantonio.com