By Irene Conlan -
Ly
me disease. It sounds simple. It is not. It is a long term, debilitating assault on every aspect of your being. This is one woman’s story of her battle with this tick-related, spirochete-caused disease and it’s a story you won’t soon forget.
I didn’t want to read another book about someone’s illness – I’ve reviewed a number of them this year – and I thought that was enough. And so I procrastinated. But the radio interview with Katina Makris was just around the corner and I needed to get at it.
I read review books at breakfast and this one looked like it was worth about two weeks of oatmeal and eggs. I picked it up on Thursday and, instead of quitting when I finished eating, I stepped out of character and finished the chapter. On Friday, I read two chapters and on Saturday I moved from the breakfast table to the living room, book in hand, and read until I finished it. I couldn’t put it down. Not only does Katina Makris tell a compelling story, but she is as brilliant an artist with words as she is with a palette of paint. Her descriptions draw you in and make you a part of the experience.
A health care professional as well as a healer, she writes about the course of this incapacitating illness both as a doctor and as a patient. Sliding from a robust, healthy homeopathic physician with a very active family and busy practice, she rapidly became a bedridden woman who could barely hold her head up. As the disease progressed her life crumbled around her.
Her story could belong to any one of us who may be at the wrong place at the wrong time and come into contact with the spirochete that causes Lyme disease. The question is, could we meet it head on it with the courage, determination and grit that Makris did? She shares it all for our benefit – the highs and the very low lows. She opens her soul for us and shares the emotions in all their “glory” – the fear, the discouragement, the exhaustion, the doubt, the feelings of abandonment and helplessness and she buoys us up with her courage, her hope for recovery and her determination to get well.
Her journey through Lyme disease is, however, more than simply a medical one. It is also a spiritual one. Makris states,
“May my story bring help and hope to those of you who need it. Healing is a journey of the deepest order. It comes from within. By opening your heart to its whimpering, the answers will come. You will be set free. May each and every one of you be graced with the power of love. It is eternal. We are all eternal. This I know.”
Who should read this book? Anyone who has experienced a debilitating chronic illness such as Fibromyalgia, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or Lyme disease as well as anyone whose loved one has the misfortune to have one of them. It will help you understand what is happening and give you hope that there may be an end to it sometime, somehow. Health care workers of all kinds need to hear the descriptions of the bone tiredness, the mental confusion, the aches and pains that appear and disappear so you can give the kind of informed and loving support that someone with this type of illness needs. And anyone who loves brilliant storytelling and descriptions that make everything come to life inside your mind should get this book and plan to spend some time – just you and the book – because you probably won’t be able to put it down.
