The Sky Was Falling: A Young Surgeon's Story of Bravery, Survival, and Hope

Summary

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

In this “essential work that provides lasting insights and lessons for the individual and society” (Jerome Groopman, MD, New York Times bestselling author), a young pediatric surgeon and mother reveals her dramatic, cathartic diary, written as she worked on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic at one of New York City’s busiest hospitals.

For many of us, the experience of the peak pandemic was eerily incongruous. We were sequestered in our quiet homes but reminded of the devastation by the never-ending ping of news alerts. Dr. Cornelia Griggs’s experience was altogether different. A pediatric surgery fellow in New York City, she was entering the final victory lap at the end of nine grueling years of training. She was set for a big graduation celebration and looking forward to spending some real time with her husband and kids. Then came COVID-19.

Initially, Griggs encouraged her friends and family not to panic. However, as mysterious cases began showing up in the hospital, and then hospital supplies started disappearing from shelves, she couldn’t hold back the feeling that this was going to be worse than she had thought. She wrote a startling op-ed in The New York Times called “The Sky Is Falling” that went, for lack of a better word, viral. The piece was read by over a million people, and Griggs appeared on CNN.

Having once aspired to be a journalist, Griggs found that the only way to make sense of what she was witnessing around her and maintain her sanity was to keep a diary. The Sky Was Falling is her day-to-day account of what most of us were grateful to only see in the news—the sharply increasing case numbers, the dwindling supply of respirators, the lack of clarity on how to treat this new disease. Harrowing, deeply personal, and page-turning in the way of the best medical memoirs, it tells the story of healthcare professionals who went beyond what they thought they were capable of to heal their patients, and themselves.