A book review of This Is How I Save My Life – Searching the World for a Cure: a Lyme Disease Memoir by Amy B. Scher
Stars: *****
Gallery Books (2018)
Memoir> Lyme Disease
272 pages
Disclosure: I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. This post contains affiliate links.
Summary: By the time Amy B. Scher was twenty-eight-years-old, she had lived through almost a decade of misdiagnoses, excruciating pain, brain lesions, bone marrow biopsies, blood transfusions, and multiple hospital stays to treat her late-stage, chronic Lyme disease.
Taking forty-four pills a day and deteriorating rapidly, she consulted with more than sixty doctors, including the top experts in Los Angeles, the world-renowned Mayo Clinic in Minneapolis, and a state-of-the-art hospital in Chicago. When the best physicians in America labeled her condition incurable and potentially terminal, it was up to Amy to blaze her own path forward.
Then, in a stroke of serendipity, she heard about an experimental treatment only available in India–human embryonic stem cell therapy–which had as much probability of killing her as it did of curing her. She boarded a plane with no idea of what awaited her: culture shock, radical medical treatment, and most surprising of all, life-affirming love.
With warmth and humor, Amy’s powerful and uplifting story of sheer determination is for anyone who believes in–or doubts–the existence of miracles. It is for anyone who wants desperately to believe in the power of the human spirit when it seems that all hope is lost. For everyone who has suffered from chronic pain, grappled with an autoimmune condition, fought for a diagnosis, or trusted their gut and their body when no one else did, Amy is a living example of how our instinct to survive can propel us onward.
This is How I Save My Life
I had read about Lyme Disease before reading this book. I knew it could get bad if it gets Chronic. It’s crazy how one bug bite can cause so much trouble in our bodies. If you have chronic Lyme or know someone who does you may want to read this book. If however you were just diagnosed with regular Lyme Disease you might not want to read it as it may scare you.
Amy Scher is a great author and in fact as written other books too. Her writing is captivating and I couldn’t put the book down till I finished it. Her journey to India was really interesting to read. I don’t normally enjoy travel memoirs but I do like health memoirs. This is a mixture of both but I really enjoyed it. India is so different from North America but she adapted really quickly I think. I couldn’t have done it.
Even if you don’t have Lyme, if you have any other chronic condition you will find hope in this book. Although chronic illness don’t generally have a cure, finding anything that can make living with the condition better is worth the effort. You’ll have to read the book to find out if she found a cure or not.
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