"Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America"

On this edition of ST Medical Monday, we discuss a work that takes a careful and long-overdue look at how caregiving and burnout so often go hand-in-hand in this country. Our guest is Kate Washington, an essayist, freelance writer, and food critic based in Northern California. Her new book, which she tells us about, is a memoir/report/study titled "Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America." As was noted by Kirkus Reviews, this book is "a biting critique of how America is failing its unpaid caregivers.... A bracing antidote to 'sentimentalized narratives' that cast unpaid caregiving as its own reward when, the author makes clear, better Family and Medical Leave Act benefits would be far more useful.... A startling, hard-hitting story of a family medical disaster made worse by cultural insensitivities to caregivers."