"All That Really Matters" by Dr. David Weill

Dealing with someone who faces a life-or-death situation just once is enough for most of us. But what of someone involved in transplant surgery who goes through it time after time?How do you deal with having so much power and responsibility?  Those are some of the factors that led Dr. David Weill to write his first novel, All That Really Matters.The former director of the Advanced Lung Disease and Lung and Heart Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical School, Weill, a former transplant surgeon, had plenty of experience to draw on."The characters in the book are derived from people I've come in contact with over the years," said Weill.The subject, transplant surgery, touches on one of the most dramatic outcomes modern medicine can produce. "It's the biggest reset button you could possibly have," he said.With 100,000 people waiting for transplants in this world, just getting on a waiting list is difficult, said Weill. "You don't know when the time (for surgery) is going to come. You have to be ready all the time. If it does come, (for family and immediate friends) you don't know if this will be the last time you'll see the very person you care the most about," he added.Fiction presents an opportunity to make a point about the present health system that needs to be made, said Weill. "As much non-fiction has been written about our broken health system, I haven't seen a lot of progress. If anything, it's been going in the opposite direction. That makes me sad because I love this field," he said.As head of the Weill Consulting Group, work that takes him all over the globe, Weill is already hard at work on another book.