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Sweet Invisible Body: Reflections on a Life With Diabetes

Sweet Invisible Body: Reflections on a Life With Diabetes

List Price: $13.00
Your Price: $9.75
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Painfully Accurate
Review: Anyone who wants to know what living with Diabetes is like (especially Type I) should read this book. I found the book hard to read at times because it brought so much feeling that I wasn't expecting.

I have Type I Diabetes, & for years and years ALL the books about diabetes were about food, food, and oh yeah, here's what you have to do to try to avoid complications--I could never find anything that discussed how diabetes makes you feel. This and "Needles" fill the void. It's about time.

This book talks A LOT about how diabetes makes you FEEL. It reminded me of "An Autobiography of a Face" & "Needles," because she focused on how diabetes affected her personal identity.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Ignore the Negative Reviews, This Book is Awesome!
Review: I had the unique opportunity to meet one-on-one, have phone conversations, and exchange emails with the author while I was reading this work. Lisa Roney is a brilliant, delightful, and well-balanced person. She is an extremely successful professional in her field.

Within five minutes of meeting, Lisa disclosed her diabetes to me, but never dwelled on it. She was very open and realistic in discussing her struggles whenever the context was appropriate, but was positive towards life and was not negative or depressing, as some have speculated.

As a non-diabetic unfamiliar with the disease, the book itself provided me great insight and empathy for what Lisa and others have dealt with each day of their lives. While the book revolves around diabetes as the central theme in Lisa's life, it is much more about the human condition of how we all must deal with our imperfections and fears, whatever they may be.

Written in a lovely style, the author is never afraid to expose her sensitivity and vulnerabilities, though it also displays that she can be tough as nails in dealing with the paradox of accepting her life's obstacles while tenaciously pursuing its promise.

"Would it not be better to mark the interval together, looking at what is really here, seeing others, telling the truth about our bodies, neither so perfect as we might hope nor so horrible as we dread?"

I also became aware that since the book was published advances in care have been brought about by the insulin pump. It has greatly improved Lisa's life with its flexibility and increased control.

"Sweet Invisible Body" is not for someone who wants life to be all sugar-coated and Pollyannish. Nonetheless, ultimately this is a story of acceptance, endurance, hope, and beauty.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An Author That Can Relate!
Review: I thought this book was a very real and true account of someone living with Juvenile Diabetes. I like the fact that the author touches on the emotions and anger of the disease. It is just not a book about eating right and taking insulin. It goes deeper than that. I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at age 11 and I am now 19. This book closely relates to what I had to go through and what I am still experiencing.It made me feel that I am not the only one. When reading this I became more comfortable with my diabetes. It really helped me evalute my feelings about having a chronic illness.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Absolutely awful
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. I have had Type 1 diabetes since I was 15 and I am 26 now. I couldn't relate at all to Ms. Roney's prolonged focus on being and "outcast", and I don't understand the logic of blaming failed romances and friendships on diabetes. I was hoping to find a book about someone who learned to accept and live with this disease. The author has a way to go to reach that point.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: depressing and uninspiring
Review: I was very disappointed with this book. I have had Type 1 diabetes since I was 15 and I am 26 now. I couldn't relate at all to Ms. Roney's prolonged focus on being and "outcast", and I don't understand the logic of blaming failed romances and friendships on diabetes. I was hoping to find a book about someone who learned to accept and live with this disease. The author has a way to go to reach that point.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Courageous insight into the life of a diabetic
Review: Like Lisa, I have had diabetes since I was 12 and take multiple shots a day. I enjoyed reading a book from someone who also had juvenile diabetes. Many times, I find books on "how to deal with diabetes," or "how to 'fix' my diabetes," when it can't be fixed. There is no cure. This book was therapeutic, in that I was able to relate to the struggles which she has gone through. I think Lisa goes a bit overboard with blaming her diabetes for everything which happens in her life. I appreciate her willingness to share her feelings and perspective as an insulin-dependent diabetic.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: An accurate, but whiny, description of life with diabetes.
Review: Lisa Roney captures beautifully how it feels to be a pre-teen diagnosed with a chronic disease. I, too, was twelve when I started taking insulin. In fact, the trials she experiences with her diabetes very closely parallel what I have also gone through. However, I found the incredibly whiny nature of the discourse very hard to take. It truly does seem as if she blames all of her disappointments in life on her disease. I don't feel that this book would be inspiring or even helpful to someone recently diagnosed with diabetes. I know very few people, chronic disease or not, who are so mired in their own self-absorptive depression. Also, what the heck is all that strange cataloging of her friends, her boyfriends, the detailed contents of her apartment, etc.? The book started out wonderfully, then digressed into a long, rambling whine. I personally feel sorry that Ms. Roney has had such a bad time of it, but I just can't empathize. And this is despite the fact that countless times I have gone though every single diabetes-associated malady that she describes, and then some.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The truth about herself, no longer invisible
Review: The author set out, beyond all else, to tell the truth about herself, as best she could. The fundamental truthfulness of her account, taken as a whole, gives it a value that transcends any of the shortcomings of content or rhetoric identified by reviewers here and elsewhere. Readers who want to hear that diabetes is no big deal, if managed properly, will not find this book to their liking. Nor will those who prefer stories with unambiguous endings or heroic triumphs, or those who value women, and people generally, only when they are gracious and accommodating, or, in other words, "sweet." Others like myself, who have lived with, worked with, loved, and truly known diabetics (and women) regarded as "difficult" will find much that is familiar, and probably much they value. I wish I could give it more than five stars.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Absolutely awful
Review: This book seems to be the author's search to justify her existence. It's self-indulgent twaddle.

I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1969 at the age of 4, and although the disease can and does bring challenges, the manner in which Lisa Roney shows her lack of self-esteem and her need to blame her disease for any and all failings in her life is pure blindness. She simultaneously claims to be dying from her disease - as would we all be, in her argument - and yet refusing to "admit" to people that she has the disease. She despairs at the lack of understanding while not being willing to tell people what she endures. She appears all too willing to air it all publicly in this self-indulgent, depressing book.

I sincerely hope that Lisa Roney has learned - at long last - to be at peace with her diabetes and not to expect others to either overlook or focus too heavily on it. In this book she doesn't seem to know which focus she wants "outsiders" to have, let alone herself.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I AM NOT ALONE...
Review: Unlike most books about diabetes, this one takes care to explore the emotional implications of this potentially deadly disease. Lisa Roney should be commended for this beautifully written book, which aptly describes and indeed, paints a stark picture of the realities of life with diabetes. This is not a typical "how to cope" book, but rather, an intimate and revealing account of one woman's battle with a condition that forces her to define her life, her loves, her goals and her future while struggling to understand herself amidst the havoc wreaked by chronic illness.
Having had the disease myself for almost a decade, I have read many books on the subject of diabetes. This is the first that has truly helped me to know that I am not alone. Lisa Roney has enabled me to understand my feelings about myself and this insidious condition, and indeed, for the first time in years, to articulate my struggle, my feelings, and my needs to those around me. This book is required reading for anyone living with diabetes, and it is certainly recommended reading for those who love them.


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