One week after graduating with honors from Harvard Medical School, Jody Heymann woke up in an emergency room with no memory of how she got there, and, within hours, was turned from physician into patient. The hospitalization and brain surgery that followed taught her more about the practice of medicine in America than all her years of schooling. Her deeply disturbing conclusion: patients all too often occupy the bottom rung of the ladder, with their legs tied to prevent them from climbing. Heymann's experiences as a patient convinced her to work toward a new, more compassionate spirit of medicine-one in which physicians and patients are equal partners.