All of a Piece: A Life With Multiple Sclerosis

Rating:
Summary: Enlightening and thought provoking
Review: In the late 1960s, twenty-three year old Barbara Webster began to experience problems with walking, with speech, with fatigue, and a host of other problems. When examining doctors and neurologists could find no explanation for her problem, Ms. Webster began experiencing hostility from people who believed that her problems were psychosomatic problems brought on by stress and poor choices, if not mere malingering.

Then, some fifteen years later, she found a new doctor who correctly diagnosed her problem, Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Now that she had a diagnosis, she still had a problem. Working through her disease, she found that the people around her complicated her journey. This book is a narrative of her journey, and it was a rocky road indeed. She experienced hostility, indifference, disapproval, pity and many other emotions, and all of these from strangers, friends, family and even lovers.

I must admit to feeling inadequate to write this review. Ms. Webster did not intend this book to be a "how to" for others, but merely the story of her experiences. For her, anything that got in the way of the acceptance of her disease, with all its changes to her self-image, was an obstacle in her path. Certainly religion was no help. ("For me, religion is a means to avoid seeing clearly and to shelter oneself from reality. It seems to me that religion is often used as a cover for, even a promotion of, hypocritical and dishonest behavior.")

This is the story of one woman's confrontation and acceptance of a reality that includes having a chronic disease and being disabled in the United States. My wife, with her recent diagnosis of MS, did not find much in common with Ms. Webster's views, but then again MS is a highly individual disease, striking no two people in the same way. For myself, I found this book enlightening and thought provoking.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book!
Review: This is a de rigeur read for those facing up to a diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Ms. Webster tackles the problems of having MS with a searing intelligence and in depth analysis based on her own personal experiences. Her thoughts struck a chord with my own experiences and gave me a lot of help in coming to terms with my own diagnosis. She addresses not only the personal experience of having MS but also widens the scope to include its effects of the people around the MS diagnosee and how society in general view people with the disease. She doesn't dodge any of the difficult issues and writes in a clear and easy to read manner. I cannot applaud her efforts highly enough.