For this one, I checked a lot of boxes: memoir (Wiman's past), medical (Wiman's cancer), philosophy-religion (Wiman's ambivalent love for ChristianityFor this one, I checked a lot of boxes: memoir (Wiman's past), medical (Wiman's cancer), philosophy-religion (Wiman's ambivalent love for Christianity), poetry (not only Wiman originals, but many other poets' works that have moved him in some way). In short, the kind of book I like because it's one goulash of delights.
Slow, though. If you're an impatient reader who likes to jack-rabbit through pages for the end (Muttering "Next book, next book!" like the White Rabbit), forget it. These essays can get kind of dense, some more than others, and, as is true in any collection, you will find more to like in some outings than in others. Oh and well. One can't be fussy when it comes to reading collections, be they short stories, essays, or poems.
Here's an example of a poem that gives Wiman pause and reason to reason:
A Prayer That Will Be Answered
Lord let me suffer much and then die
Let me walk through silence and leave nothing behind not even fear
Make the world continue let the ocean kiss the sand just as before
Let the grass stay green so that the frogs can hide in it
so that someone can bury his face in it and sob out his love
Make the day rise brightly as if there were no more pain
And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane bumped by a bumblebee's head
-- Anna Kamieńska, tr. by Clare Cavanagh and Stanislaw Barańezak
As you can see, the poem brings up lots of Wiman's touchstones, giving him ample opportunity to muse and riff on it.
That's the sort of thing you get here. Some chapters are outright essays. Others outright poems. Others still collections of quotes touching on Wiman topics (read: hope, despair, God, Jesus, life, death, faith, atheism, etc.).
By now, you know whether this is your cuppa or not. For me, yes. For you? Clicking "To Read" (mostly meaningless on GR, admittedly, but still fun) or passing on this review to greener pastures will answer that question....more
Interesting that A.J. Lees, a neurologist, doesn't need to trumpet his medical degrees or titles on the book's cover.
Nope. Just A.J. Lee, is all. OldInteresting that A.J. Lees, a neurologist, doesn't need to trumpet his medical degrees or titles on the book's cover.
Nope. Just A.J. Lee, is all. Old school. A listener with his patients. An observer on a par with Sherlock Holmes (a medical enthusiast himself). Someone who only orders necessary tests, doesn't rule out a disease if one of the key symptoms is missing, knows the power of touch and voice during an examination first to learn from the body by its reactions and second to reassure the patient who, no doubt, is there due to his or her dire health condition.
All good, all there in this book. With it, you get a British POV history of neurology along with background on some of the historical giants in the field (not just from England), what they accomplished, and how they accomplished it.
Are there model cases? Of course, but no so many that folks with symptoms of unknown provenance might expect to find answers to their own questions.
Still, interesting. The hell that some bodies go through, I mean, when their neurological system turns traitor by going haywire. And hunting down the culprit (Sherlock Holmes-like) is no easy job, either. Some you win, some you lose. Some you save, some you don't. Some survive or die despite you, and some survive (but hopefully don't die) because of you. And so on.
A few quotes for the tone of Lees' voice:
“Private hospitals are there to generate income and all the rhetoric of quality, safety and patient satisfaction is in truth no more than a public relations exercise.”
“Most of the deans and directors of neurological institutes and heads of department are now divorced almost entirely from clinical practice. They are obliged to spend most of their time in administration signing forms and sitting on committees.”
“While medical technology has greatly enhanced the ability to diagnose and treat disease it has also encouraged a mental laziness in some doctors.”
“Included within the sixty Sherlock Holmes adventures are references to sixty-eight diseases, thirty-two medical terms, thirty-eight doctors, twenty-two drugs, twelve medical specialties, six hospitals and even three medical journals and two medical schools.”
In the end, you get a sense of what it's like to have a doctor passionate about his field and his patients (who are people, not numbers). Everyone should have a doctor like this, but not everyone does, sadly....more
Under the gimmicky name of "Medicine 3.o" (vs. present-day 2.0), Dr. Attia advocates for a much more proactive approach toward what he calls "The FourUnder the gimmicky name of "Medicine 3.o" (vs. present-day 2.0), Dr. Attia advocates for a much more proactive approach toward what he calls "The Four Horsemen":
* Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular disease * Cancer * Alzheimer's disease and related neurodegenerative conditions * Type 2 diabetes and related metabolic dysfunction
Probably one of the horsemen is coming for you already and has begun its advance work (you just don't know it), so his idea is to use tools and strategies available sooner than your regular doctor would recommend (2.0 being more reactive than proactive when it comes to the We-Mean-Business Horsemen, you see).
In addition to tips on what tests to get and how to live longer than you are presently destined to, Attia also dives into familiar territory like exercise, diet, sleep, and so forth. Especially exercise, though. Work, people! If you want to be able to open a jar as an elderly person, keep your balance and not fall, get up out of chairs, walk from A to B without tumbling into C, and so on.
Yes, he has a website with some how-to videos but only a few. Like most writers concerned about your health or your pain or your short and anguished life, he wants to make some money off you too, so here you can...wait for it!...SUBSCRIBE to get more videos!
Introducing the Fifth Horseman: Ka-ching the Kapitalist.
As for the diet and the sleep stuff, I was mostly familiar with it already. Especially sleep. I read a lot about sleep, but there are no sure-fire answers to insomnia, just helpful things you can do, like not go on Goodreads the hour before bedtime and certainly by not taking your phone or other blue-lit screens to your bedroom. (Come on, amateurs!) And keep the bedroom temp at 65 degrees Fahrenheit, why don't you! Easy in winter, but rather brutal in the air-conditioned summer when setting the thermostat THAT low would make you look like a selfish climate-change apologist (who sleeps well and the devil take the hindmost --- read: the rest of the tornado, hurricane, flooding, burning, heating-up world).
The worst part of the book was Attia's personal story. I guess it was meant to humanize him, but it all came across as a bit narcissistic, given how he turned around his life (while turning around the Horsemen, too, including that Fifth One which is doing wonders for his mid-life crisis summer home, sports car, and yacht -- you'd want to live longer, too!).
Anyway, in the end, I have greater faith in the ART than in the SCIENCE. It's the liberal arts major in me, I guess. As for you? If you want to hang around a bit longer, you, like me, might put on your farmer hat and separate the wheat from the chaff here. It's smoothly written (thank you, visible ghost writer Bill Gifford) so goes down easily enough....more
Chronic pain affects around 10% of people worldwide. Most of them are “forgotten people” because modern medicine—busy as hell with people it CAN diagnChronic pain affects around 10% of people worldwide. Most of them are “forgotten people” because modern medicine—busy as hell with people it CAN diagnose—pretty much gives them a label (fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, myofascial pain syndrome) and wishes them luck because they’ll need it.
They have plenty of company, too. The CDC says each year half a million people in the U.S. are diagnosed with Lyme or some other tick-borne disease causing a constellation of chronic pain conditions. Add to that the Lyme sufferers who are NOT diagnosed and you get books like New York Times columnist Ross Douthat’s The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery.
Who reads books depicting misery like this? Chiefly people in chronic pain. Sick, isn’t it? I mean, the sick reading about the sick, hoping for succor, hoping for a blueprint on how to escape the maze.
The trouble? No Lyme sufferer is exactly alike. And once the CDC says you’re fine (when you feel anything but), no Lyme protocol from the “out there” doctors is exactly alike, either. Each patient reacts differently to various antibiotics, tinctures, herbs, not to mention (though Ross does) magnets, Rife machines, and medicines found on a veterinarian's shelf, not a doctor's.
Meaning: Peeps in pain read books about specific cases, like Ross’s, for a strange form of relief. Years, Ross suffered, going through a gauntlet of both physical and mental duress as well as doctors intended to treat them. The ELISA and Western Blot tests told him he did not have Lyme. The years of unsanctioned treatment that brought him back told him otherwise.
So yes, he got caught in the tug or war between the extremes of conventional medicine, backed by the now-dinged reputation (Covid, anyone?) of the CDC and the sometimes legit, sometimes whack job “Lyme doctors” who might lead lost sheep out of the darkness or might instead fleece them with no positive result. And yes, it's all here, in this book.
Sick, reading stuff like this, but also riveting in its way. Ross’s goal is to shed light on both sides of the somehow fanatical opponents in the world of Lyme (the two sides fight while people suffer). He sees points to both rivals' arguments, but definitely leans toward the side that saved him—the outliers.
In fact, he himself becomes an outlier, experimenting in a “don’t try this at home” kind of way, proving, as he does so, that Lyme victims who test negative on the CDC’s woeful ELISA and Western Blot tests often find relief after years of “other treatments” at great cost.
Don’t have much money for treatments and the doctors who don’t accept insurance? You might be doomed to a lifetime of chronic pain and the depression sure to ride shotgun. Do have money? Prepare to spend your savings to uncertain results (though no chronic pain victim believes money worth more than returning to the health they once took for granted).
Sick, sick, sick, reading this stuff. Bringing odd pleasure to equally sick readers. And less sick readers. And more sick readers. But, I have to believe, never to completely healthy readers, who’d have little reason to even pick up a horror story like this.
Thus, if you suffer chronic pain of unknown provenance, or if you have Lyme, or if you’ve tested negative for Lyme but feel like you’re an abandoned pawn on some medical chessboard, The Deep Places may just be the deep dive you need to spend an awful lot of money, starting with the blood test at a “predatory lab” where “everyone tests positive for Lyme” (quoting conventional doctors here).
Good God, what a mess. And the hope that Long Covid sufferers, who seem to be better accepted by modern medicine than the labeled crowd and the Lyme crowd, might help us learn more about unexplained pain (tests say they're healthy, but reality says they're anything but) could prove a false alarm. Here in Maine, for instance, a big Portland hospital just shut its novel and commendable “Long Covid Facility,” telling patients that their primary care physicians can now assume the role of treating them without a problem.
Written in 1991, so a lot of it is dated, but I really wanted to read it because I'd heard about so many "cures" via Sarno's mind-body connection. I mWritten in 1991, so a lot of it is dated, but I really wanted to read it because I'd heard about so many "cures" via Sarno's mind-body connection. I much enjoyed The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain, read last year, but now I see there's nothing "Revolutionary" about that book's approach at all. It's all pretty much lifted from this one, then given a more modern spin and applied to the entire body vs. the back alone....more
Know someone who suffers from chronic pain? The last thing you want to tell him is it's all in his head. Pain is real. And it's wherever you're feelinKnow someone who suffers from chronic pain? The last thing you want to tell him is it's all in his head. Pain is real. And it's wherever you're feeling it.
That said, it's in your head.
Why? Because your brain is the conductor of all body pain. When it's doing its job, it saves your life by telling you HOT! or OUCH! or RETREAT! And if you legitimately injure yourself, it cautions you to SLOW DOWN and take restorative action.
But what if you've been tested six ways to Monday and medical science comes up empty? Then you get hit with catch-all conditions like "fibromyalgia" or "myofascial pain syndrome" or even, in the case of backs, a slipped disk. Having pain and being told by a doctor you have SOMEthing is a comfort of sorts, after all. Too bad it's not a comfort for your pain.
This book is about neuroplastic pain. If you see a copy in the bookstore, go directly to the appendix, where you'll find a section called "How to Determine If You Have Neuroplastic Pain." Without the explanatory paragraphs, here are the headings explaining possible clues that the source is HEAD and not BODY. Any one or more could qualify you, but many with chronic pain will check numerous boxes:
1. Pain originated during a time of stress
2. Pain originated without injury (note: though some neuroplastic pain starts with an injury that won't stop hurting after the normal curing time has expired)
3. Symptoms are inconsistent (in some, worse in morning; in others, worse in the evening)
4. Large number of symptoms.
5. Symptoms spread or move.
6. Symptoms triggered by stress.
7. Triggers that have nothing to do with your body.
8. Symmetrical symptoms (i.e. same part of body, opposite side, can experience pain at different times or at the same time)
12. Lack of a physical diagnosis (or, diagnosis is one of the "catch-alls" that doctors grasp for when all else comes up empty)
Alan Gordon, head honcho at the Pain Psychology Center, wants you to know that it's not in your head, but it's your head that has to be treated. Your brain is going off like a false alarm, thinking it's protecting you when, in fact, it's hurting you. The brain, a lifelong learner, is in a loop and getting better and better at looping.
The way out? Pain Reprocessing Therapy. Which is a bunch of things, really, but chiefly somatic tracking, which sounds a lot like mindfulness (thank you, Buddha!) of your pain along with a lot of positive thoughts and the repeated mantra that there is NOTHING wrong with your body -- your tissues, muscles, back, spine, stomach, wrists, etc. They are FINE. You are SAFE.
The goal is to get your brain off high alert, to almost hypnotize it into understanding it is in a SAFE STATE and, as all the tests have proven, you don't have a killer disease, and everything is COOL. That means weeks of tracking your pain from a higher plane, noticing it, but not allowing it to panic you, feed your fear, up your stress, and thus reinforce its power (read: your brain's faulty loop).
To use a metaphor from the book, your job is to play Toto pulling the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. Chronic pain is the huge head, the bombastic noise, the jets of steam. Accepting that it's the confused and overprotective brain amounts to revealing that neuroplastic pain is really a little man pulling levers and pushing buttons, making you think he's something he's not.
So, yeah. Psychology. The brain. And you as Happy Warrior vs. your chronic, inexplicable pain. And movement. Gentle, gradual upgrading of movement (gentle yoga? qi gong? PT stretchbands?). And breathing exercises that CALM you while you're observing your pain like a wise one.
Will it work for you (or some sufferer you know)? If you've tried everything, what are your alternatives? Apparently the science from fMRI images of the brain (before and after PRT) and studies at the University of Colorado Boulder say yes, in many cases, it *does* work.
With or without the help of a therapist. Some people, using techniques offered in the book, make gradual progress on their own. Others need more guidance. From professionals. If you're a hard case in need of a therapist trained in PRT, it will cost you, bringing not neuroplastic but REAL pain to your wallet, but that's the American way.
Deep breath. Credit card. Repeat if you think it's worth the possibility of freedom.
Dec. 2022 Update: I just read Dr. John Sarno's book, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, and am surprised it was never mentioned in Gordon's book. In fact, although Sarno uses the term Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) instead of "neuroplastic pain," and although he focuses more on the back than on the body all over, the information's the same.
Negative points, then, for The Way Out. Variation on the same key, really, and kind of bogus that Sarno wasn't credited for saying the same thing already in a different way....more
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