A gutsy, consciousness-raising book about fistulas, dogs and stem cell therapy.
One woman's frank medical memoir about saving her dogs and herself.
As the New York Post's “Pets” columnist for many years, Szabo (Pretty Pet-Friendly: Easy Ways to Keep Spot's Digs Stylish and Spotless, 2008, etc.) is well-known for her deep compassion toward animals, dogs in particular. Over the years, she has spared no expense or veterinary procedure to ensure the longevity of her many canine companions. Szabo filled her life with dogs that provided the love and support she needed while she dealt with an embarrassing and lifestyle-hampering medical problem, a perianal fistula, and an abusive husband with whom she was regrettably deeply in love. Little did she realize, though, that when she had dog stem cells injected into her beloved pit bull, Sam, to cure his osteoarthritis, this would lead her on a global journey to find a cure for her own debilitating health issue. When Sam rebounded after his Vet-Stem injections, Szabo began an intensive study into the whole concept of stem cell research and discovered that the United States was far behind other countries when it came to the use of this breakthrough technology in humans. For a dog, cat or horse, stem cell injections were an expensive but available procedure, but for a human, the options were limited. In honest, sometimes-graphic prose, the author describes her crippling bouts of inflammation from her fistula, the way she used a healthy diet to limit flare-ups and the endless joy she received from her many dogs while searching for a cure. Szabo persevered and discovered the California Stem Cell Treatment Center, where she had her own stem cells (found in her body fat) injected into her fistula and bloodstream and rediscovered the joy of a normal life.
A gutsy, consciousness-raising book about fistulas, dogs and stem cell therapy.Pub Date: March 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-7627-9644-1
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Lyons Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2014
A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...
The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).
Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-42850-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
SEEN & HEARD
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.
In her first nonfiction book, novelist Grande (Dancing with Butterflies, 2009, etc.) delves into her family’s cycle of separation and reunification.
Raised in poverty so severe that spaghetti reminded her of the tapeworms endemic to children in her Mexican hometown, the author is her family’s only college graduate and writer, whose honors include an American Book Award and International Latino Book Award. Though she was too young to remember her father when he entered the United States illegally seeking money to improve life for his family, she idolized him from afar. However, she also blamed him for taking away her mother after he sent for her when the author was not yet 5 years old. Though she emulated her sister, she ultimately answered to herself, and both siblings constantly sought affirmation of their parents’ love, whether they were present or not. When one caused disappointment, the siblings focused their hopes on the other. These contradictions prove to be the narrator’s hallmarks, as she consistently displays a fierce willingness to ask tough questions, accept startling answers, and candidly render emotional and physical violence. Even as a girl, Grande understood the redemptive power of language to define—in the U.S., her name’s literal translation, “big queen,” led to ridicule from other children—and to complicate. In spelling class, when a teacher used the sentence “my mamá loves me” (mi mamá me ama), Grande decided to “rearrange the words so that they formed a question: ¿Me ama mi mamá? Does my mama love me?”
A standout immigrant coming-of-age story.Pub Date: Aug. 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6177-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2012
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