After Shock
Rana Awdish, MD
Internal Medicine, Pulmonary and Critical Care,
SOPW member
2026, St. Martin’s Press
In this powerful follow-up to her bestselling memoir In Shock, a doctor asks: What does it truly mean to heal?
In the aftermath of her own critical illness, physician and writer Dr. Rana Awdish finds herself oddly estranged from her own body. Medicine has conditioned her to view sick bodies as broken objects, not as sites of meaning, mystery, and quiet wisdom. As she deconstructs her belief system and reassembles the pieces, she finds a radical alternative: healing as an embodied and relational process.
What emerges is a profound meditation on the stories we create about ourselves, their value, and their limitations. Through her poetic prose and evocative imagery, we learn to see differently, feel deeply, and trust that healing is always possible
Praise for After Shock
“Awdish's incisive observations and raw candor...will take your breath away.”
— Neda Frayha, M.D., F.A.C.P., Editor and host, The Monthly Rounds podcast“Blesses both medicine and literature with her generous heart and poetic instincts.”
— Emily Silverman, MD, Founder, The Nocturnists, Assistant Volunteer Clinical Professor of Medicine, UCSF“Will forever alter how you think about healing.”
— Jessi Gold MD, MS psychiatrist, author of How Do You Feel