Alice's lament after falling down the rabbit hole captures what most of us feel when we are catapulted into the world of illness: “How queer everything is today! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night?” Suddenly, like Alice, you find yourself struggling in an alien environment, with an unfamiliar culture, where even the language is strange. How do you cope? How do you manage? How do you find your way? Like Alice, it's natural to think, “It would be so nice if something made sense for a change.”

Making sense of and surviving the powerlessness produced by illness are what this book is about, and it had its beginning where all medical encounters start – with the patient. In this case, HK, a vibrant man in his fifties who had achieved every worldly success, in large part because of the power of his personality and his ability to tackle difficult problems and solve them in creative ways. When he began to notice a persistent pain in his shoulder and arm, he attributed it to strain from physical activity. However, it did not decrease, and when he met a colleague for lunch, he complained of having trouble climbing the steep steps outside the restaurant. Alarmed, his friend urged him to go directly to an emergency department, where it was immediately clear he was having a heart attack.