The Camera My Mother Gave Me

Rating:
Summary: Kaysen invites the world to be her gynecologist
Review: A very odd book, this is a memoir of Kaysen's experiences with an, um, inimate health problem. I now know a lot about her sexual problems and confusion, but little about her as a person - not even how finds the money to support herself. Does she jump out of bed and start writing every day? Does she teach a class? Does she simply live of the profits of her earlier, enormously successful memoir, "Girl, Interrupted"?

While the author is clearly very bright, in dealing with her illness she's made a lot of stupid decisions and come to some stupid conclusions. Why, if she wasn't satisifed with the surgeon she consulted, didn't she press him for answers or even get a second opinion? Why did she persist in going to doctors and then rejecting the treatments they proposed? Why *wouldn't* she discuss her medical problems with her boyfriend? Why *wouldn't* she allow him to speak to her doctors? And why, when after a year of enduring her rejection, he finally - in an act of frustration and desperation - becomes more aggressive, does she panic, flee, and describe his actions to all of her friends as "attempted rape"?

The book is startling in its frankness about sexual matters, but provides little insight into any other area of the author's life. While I now know a great deal about her inner parts, she never revealed her inner life. At the end, I couldn't say that I ever understood or even liked the author. I guess the best way to summarize it is to say that in this book, Kaysen invites the world to be her gynecologist - not her friend.

Rating:
Summary: Vulva, Interrupted - realistic portrayal
Review: As in "Girl, Interrupted," Susanna Kaysen focuses her sharp camera-eye on a reality not often talked about. In "Girl, Interrupted" these realities largely centered around mental illness and definitions of such for women. In "The Camera My Mother Gave Me," the realities are vulvar disorders - causes, treatments, explanations, talking with others about it - and figuring out its meaning.

I liked this book largely because it was a very true story not just about Kaysen's life, but about many women who struggle with a vulvar disorder - be in vestibulitis (as Kaysen has), vulvodynia, lichen sclerosus - even vulvar cancer.

Women with vulvar disorders often wonder if they are alone, why hasn't there been more research in years or in decades (Kaysen and her research and medical colleagues make this point, too) - is this a reflection on mental state? or is there really a physical cause? is it a connection between the two that may exacerbate the terrible lows of the disorder? These are questions that women diagnosed with vulvar disorders grapple with.

It was also fascinating to read this book years after having read "Girl, Interrupted" - and to really empathize with her reaction when she is faced with the prospect of having to take tricyclic antidepressants or an SSRI such as Prozac. Having this thread of her autobiographies gave "The Camera My Mother Gave Me" much added weight.

Rating:
Summary: Funny and thought provoking!
Review: Having read Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen's gripping and comic memoir, I didn't hesitate to pick up this book. The Camera My Mother Gave Me is a thought-provoking and witty memoir about Kaysen's encounters with various doctors -- gynecologists, vulvologists, internists, alternative health physicians -- in a quest to find out what is wrong with her vagina. Her vagina suffers from a mysterious illness that doctors have not been able to identify -- thus, said illness interferes with her relationship with her boyfriend. Should she insist on getting to the bottom of things, or should she learn to live with her unidentified condition?

Funny, intelligent and compelling, The Camera My Mother Gave Me is a short memoir that ought to be read from cover to cover. I recommend it most highly.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent! Someone speaks up!
Review: I'm grateful to Kaysen for writing this book, and I found it a fascinating read. Yet, there is something about it that rings *disservice* to so many women with the same medical problem. Although the term 'vulvodynia' is never actually mentioned (a technicality), what really bothers me is that the book is almost entirely devoid of the one thing I kept expecting to find at one point or another: HOPE. The tone is quite dark and--while I can understand the author's desire for consistency--as someone with the very condition she writes about, I kept wondering when she was ever going to get around to landing upon something that actually helped her. No such luck.

It also fails to truly convey the frustration of having to forage through the medical thicket with a condition so poorly understood. Her sarcasm rings through, but she appears to have unusually effective relationships with her doctors (perhaps this was worked over in the drafts?). While that might be an inspiration to women who need to garner a little more assertiveness while on the examination table (something difficult to do when you're half-naked in stirrups!), it comes across as SHE being the difficult one, in her resistance to a real commitment to getting better. Meanwhile, her rocky love relationship is documented with poignance and heartfelt confusion.

This is a book meant to be read for entertainment, period. There are a few scant explanations of certain theories and treatments, so thumbs up for that, at least. However, the fact that one of the central themes is a painful condition is second to the use of imagery and brevity of dialogue in creating a story that centers more around a woman's psyche in relation to her sexual self. Nothing wrong with that, and it certainly makes an insightful case. The last third of the book engaged me more than the rest, but even throughout all this thought-provoking work, I got a little irked. These are just my own personal observations:

1. She doesn't seem to give the treatments half a chance to work. And, she misspells oxalate as oxylate.

2. Pessimism reigns supreme, which probably explains #1. I question some of the other critics' assessments of the lack of any real self-pity, too. It's just more insipid and veiled through a constant filter of the ongoing meter of her sexual desire and functionality. Sure, most of us want to have sex quite often and enjoyably. But she never seems to glean any real emotional lessons whatsoever from all her trials & tribulations, and that is a disappointment.

3. The 'Why I Am Opposed to Antidepressants' chapter. While I don't disagree 100% (I've never taken them myself), her attitude strikes me as using it for secondary gains--to avoid life's other difficulties. And she even admits this avoidance to wanting to feel better, but the assumption is that it's widespread and therefore 'normal.' While it may be fashionable in this day & age to whine with semi-masochistic angst about the Disease du Jour, anyone with any degree of experience with said Problematic Vagina will probably see through the literary tactics and question the helpfulness of publishing a book that follows the herd in that aspect of medical mentality.

4. The shift in focus to the 'inequality' of older women vs. older men seemed a little out of place. The association of that to her chronic pain only one year later (while stating she's not going through menopause) reads as a dire prediction for anyone over the age of 40, and suggests that a woman's entire attractiveness is dependent upon the health of her vagina.

5. There are no dates given, so the reader has no way of knowing the author's age and whether this was early on in the treatment & research (10-20 years ago), or just recently!

In the end, Kaysen closes with a note on the mind-body connection, stating, "disease is one of our languages. Doctors understand what disease has to say about itself. It's up to the person with the disease to understand what the disease has to say to her. My vagina keeps trying to get my attention. It has something important to say to me. I'm listening. I'm still listening."
I couldn't help but wonder that if she wasn't listening so much to her vagina, maybe her mind would let her take the treatments more seriously! But maybe hoping for a thoroughly happy ending is a bit unrealistic.

If you're still listening, Ms. Kaysen, my question to you is: Are you better yet?

Rating:
Summary: Quick, painless read, but not very rewarding
Review: I'm not a big fan of the previous book I read by this author, "Girl, Interrupted." This book is better, or at least more engaging, but I still find Kaysen prefers a passive, almost victimized role, which makes her narrative less appealing. I don't identify with her at all. It's an interesting read, and I appreciate her descriptions of navigating health care and using the resources she has to learn what she can on her own. It's very short; I read it in about two hours. It's certainly not the best book I've read. She seems unlikeable and whiny, and in the end, I wasn't all that interested in how things turned out for her.

Rating:
Summary: Honest and remarkable.
Review: My god, what a life Kaysen, the author of "Girl, Interrupted," a memoir about her teenage years in a mental institution, has had. First that and now this -- a follow-up memoir about her experiences years later with a mysterious and ultimately untreatable vaginal syndrome, the main symptom of which is unbearable and constant pain. As she struggles with the pain and her frustration over her doctors' inability to find out what is causing it, she also finds herself battling her boyfriend who has no compassion for her problem and just accuses of her not wanting to have sex with him anymore.

Again, Kaysen does not shy away from all the gory details -- including the intense emotional ups and downs that ensue. But it was really her words on chronic pain that truly affected me. The realization, for example, that, honestly, the pain itself isn't the worst part of chronic pain. The worst part is the fact that you can't ever leave it. Even when you are distracted into forgetting it's there -- it's ALWAYS THERE. And this, more than the pain itself, is what makes people with chronic pain so incredibly exhausted.

As someone in that category myself (though my pain is in my hands), I could really relate to her stories -- her guilt (is this my fault? did I do something wrong? if I don't want to try something that might help, does that mean I don't want to get better?), her frustration, her fear that it's "all in her head," and, most of all, her ultimate decision not to let it rule her life anymore. She says at one point she felt like she'd become a vagina -- a walking, talking vagina, the pain had so consumed her world. And that changed everything. That was unacceptable.

This is a short but incredibly powerful book. Great for chronic pain warriors (I prefer that to "patients" or "sufferers") who crave the validation that comes from hearing someone else articulate what you feel. And, even better, great for the friends and family of CP warriors who struggle to understand but so often just cannot. (...)

In the passage just after this one, she describes chronic pain as being like carrying an unwieldy suitcase around. It's not that the suitcase is too heavy to bear -- it's that you can't ever set it down. That's it. That's it EXACTLY. This is a marvelous book. If Kaysen is reading this: thank you.

Rating:
Summary: grateful to Kaysen for sharing
Review: My opinions about Kaysen's books are shaped largely by the fact that I suffer from the same malady this book describes, vulvar vestibulitis, a form of vulvodynia (literally "painful vulva"). It was an overwhelming relief to read this book, to hear another woman talking about her experience with this disorder and facing many of the same challenges I have faced. Among the two largest of these are trying to talk to friends and family about a disorder that few people know about and that very few feel comfortable discussing (how many friends can you talk frankly about your genitals with? think about it) and trying to have an intimate relationship with someone when sex is painful, difficult, or downright impossible.

The book is well-written and very readable. Kaysen even manages to be funny. The novel focuses on Kaysen's personal experience, and does not claim to be a medical guide - this is what makes it an interesting read for anyone, not just those affected with vulvodynia. I disagree with Kaysen's attitudes about potential treatment (she seems to dismiss some things out of hand, in my opinion) but I'm overwhelmingly grateful to her for sharing her experience.

Some statistics say that 15% of women have some form of vulvodynia during the course of their life. If more women with vulvodynia - and more who, like Kaysen, are already in the public eye - would speak out about their experiences, the rest of us would not feel so isolated.

Rating:
Summary: easy to digest medical memoir
Review: This is a lighthearted memoir of Kaysen's struggle with a little-known about medical condition she referred to as vestibulitis and a medical field that still has plenty of research to do. Kaysen's sarcastic sense of humor makes for an easy anf un read and lessens the chance of the reader cringing and putting the book down due to society's discomfort with sensitive subjects like this. Kaysen also doesn't gel over her difficulties with the medical field and her boyfriend accepting that her condition wasn't all in her head and the lack or care of knowledge, which anyone has had to deal with can appreciate.

Rating:
Summary: Bravo for sharing such an intimate problem
Review: To anyone whio has sufered from an intractable medical condition, this book will ring true. A very well written, and at time humerous, account of the author's search for relief from pain and the effects of her condition on those around her. It certainly makes one wonder about the competence of the medical profession.