Josie's Story: A Mother's Inspiring Crusade to Make Medical Care Safe

Sorrel King was a 32-year-old mother of four when her eighteen-month-old daughter, Josie, was horribly burned by water from a faulty water heater in the family’s new Baltimore home. She was taken to Johns Hopkins—renowned as one of the best hospitals in the world—and Sorrel stayed in the hospital with Josie day-in and day-out until she had almost completely recovered. Just before her discharge, however, she was erroneously injected with methadone, and died soon after.

Sorrel’s account of her unlikely path from grieving parent to nationally renowned advocate is interwoven with descriptions of her and her family’s slow but steady road to recovery, and ends with a deeply affecting description of a ski trip they took recently. The sun is shining, her children are healthy, and they are all profoundly happy—a condition that Sorrel has learned to appreciate all the more for Josie.

The book ends with a resource guide for patients, their families, and healthcare providers; it includes information about how to best manage a hospital stay and how to handle a medical error if one does occur.