Though certainly not the last word, this is an engaging “investigative journey into the phenomenon of spontaneous remission.”
Fascinating bioscience on the phenomenon of spontaneous healing.
Board-certified psychiatrist Rediger, who is on the faculty at Harvard Medical School, first began exploring the mystery of patients with incurable illnesses and their miraculous regenerations early in his medical career. Raised with traditional Amish principles, the author was astonished by what he learned and now shares in this book, which also doubles as a pragmatic guide to improving general health. Rediger spent nearly two decades interviewing and studying survivors of irremediable diseases and conditions, and his expert analysis drives much of this intriguing volume. He first examines immune system “prodding” and hyperactivation and how factors like diet, stress, and emotion directly affect it—though, as the author notes, these factors are “often passed over in routine medical care.” He chronicles his visit to spiritual healing centers in Brazil, where the ill astonishingly recovered from dire diagnoses. He probes the complex and hotly debated mind-body connection and how one’s sense of identity and healing capacity are interconnected. Rediger, who also has a seminarian background, acknowledges that these episodes are exceptional, and while his research suggests that their instances have “slowly increased in both number and frequency,” they are relatively unexplainable by medical science. He stresses that since there are no clinical trials or double-blind studies to substantiate these incidences or ways of replicating their results, physicians “have to be anthropologists, detectives, and medical investigators.” Science aside, ultimately, it’s the dramatic survivors’ profiles and their moving stories of miraculous second chances that have the most profound impact. These patients illuminate how medicine, identity, diet, the mind, and human biology intersect to possibly trigger curative spontaneous remission. Arrestingly written and chockablock with practical, empowering medical information, this thought-provoking and convincing chronicle of disease avoidance and “remarkable recovery” will give even skeptics something to ponder. Though the text offers no ready answers or explanations, Rediger instills a glimmer of hope and possibility for those who may believe they have none.
Though certainly not the last word, this is an engaging “investigative journey into the phenomenon of spontaneous remission.”Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-19319-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
The former First Lady (First Lady from Plains, 1984, etc.) offers advice, support, and pats on the back for all those who feed, clothe, bathe, and comfort sick friends and relatives, for those who insert the feeding tubes and empty the bedpans. In her introduction, Carter explains: ``I have written Helping Yourself Help Others to hopefully ease the trauma associated with caregiving and to help you feel not quite so alone.'' In a tone that hovers somewhere between the maternal and the institutional, Carter reassures home caregivers that their complaints about having no time of their own are not expressions of selfishness and that fatigue is not failure. She offers strategies to avoid burnout and depression and advice on how to deal with the problems that caregiving can cause in a marriage. It's not just care for the old and infirm that she addresses. Carter's talking to those who care for developmentally disabled children, people with AIDS, the injured, and anyone else who might require long-term care in the home. Much of the data used in the book comes out of the Rosalynn Carter Institute at Georgia Southwestern College. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8129-2370-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
An engrossing, informative, and sometimes-frightening medical account that ends on an inspirational high note.
A debut memoir explores love, cancer, and learning to live in the moment.
On June 29, 2012, Slaby and her husband, Michael, were preparing to finish work (she at a Chicago law firm, he with the Barack Obama re-election campaign) before boarding a plane for New York to attend a friend’s wedding. But first she had to see her doctor. She had been suffering from shortness of breath. Her physician detected a heart irregularity and insisted she see a cardiologist immediately. What followed became a nightmare medical saga. X-rays and CT scans revealed a grapefruit-sized tumor pressing down on her heart: “My tumor was pushing on my heart, which reacted to protect itself by filling the sac where it lives with fluid. There was so much fluid, however, that my heart was under attack from its own protection.” The author was diagnosed with stage 2 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Chemotherapy, the prescribed treatment, first involved discussions of how to preserve her fertility. She was only 33 years old. While the tumor was not removed surgically, chemotherapy successfully shrank it. And then a December 2012 follow-up PET scan showed her thymus lighting up. It could be nothing—the tumor, now one-quarter of its original size, may have wound around her thymus. Or it could be something dire. The ensuing surgery involved cracking open her chest. Then a medical error almost caused her death. Slaby’s narrative is about much more than cancer. Although the unusual complexity of the sequential medical emergencies the author endured, which she details in lucid, graphic prose, threatens to overwhelm the memoir, she also presents a tender love story. Slaby deftly intersperses portions that recall the shifting up-and-down dynamics of her long relationship with Michael. These sections, despite the periods of great turmoil, offer readers respite from the grueling medical drama. As she worked toward physical, psychological, and emotional recovery, the author meticulously documents how difficult it was for her, a self-described “control freak,” to let go of the past and find “grace and kindness inside the unexpected.”
An engrossing, informative, and sometimes-frightening medical account that ends on an inspirational high note.Pub Date: March 19, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63331-028-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Disruption Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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