BELIEVE ME

A Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star recounts her arduous battle with Lyme disease.

In this no-holds-barred memoir, Dutch-born former model and reality star Hadid tracks the debilitating symptoms that led to and progressively expanded beyond her eventual diagnosis for this chronic illness. In 2012, as filming was beginning for her first season on the Real Housewives and after having been misdiagnosed for close to two years, her condition became severe, dramatically curbing her professional and social lives and requiring prolonged periods of bed rest. The agonizing symptoms included intense joint pain and swelling, migraines, brain fog, blurred vision, and confronting an unseemly assortment of parasites. Over the next several years, Hadid’s journey would evolve into a desperate search for effective treatments, if not an outright cure. She visited dozens of medical and holistic treatment facilities throughout the world and underwent countless tests and procedures. Through expansive research and experience, the author effectively leverages her celebrity status as a persuasive spokesperson communicating the hardships endured by multitudes of sufferers who lack the financial means or insurance coverage to explore these potential resources. Yet this is also a Hollywood celebrity story, and readers who may not be fans of the Real Housewives series, with its reputation for tabloid-provoking drama, might question Hadid’s wisdom for having signed on to the program, feeling less sympathy for the intense media scrutiny that she and her family were forced to endure. Though her suffering has served as a grounding experience for the author to rise above the fray, it seems unlikely she or her children—two of whom were also diagnosed with Lyme disease—all celebrated runway models, are ready to step away from the limelight anytime soon.

A well-meaning and often compelling story of one woman’s relentless pursuit of an effective treatment for the devastating chronic effects of Lyme disease that should expand public awareness for this deeply misunderstood condition.