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“While doctors search for ways to treat interstitial cystitis, patients are often at sea when it comes to living with this illness. With this memoir, Marguerite Bouvard has charted a route through those rough waters for us.”—Vicki Ratner, MD, Founder and President, Interstitial Cystitis Association
A practical and spiritual guide to living well with chronic illness
In the late 1980s Marguerite Guzmán Bouvard began experiencing the puzzling symptoms of an illness that affects millions of women yet often takes years to diagnose, interstitial cystitis: an inflammation and deterioration of the bladder lining. It is often accompanied by related immune disorders such as fibromyalgia and vulvodynia that cause crushing fatigue and a host of allergies, conditions Bouvard developed. As her illnesses progressed, Bouvard, an active globe trotting scholar and writer, was forced to slow down and to reassess her priorities. This memoir tells the story of how she came to create a life that was rich and full despite debilitating physical conditions.
Bouvard addresses key issues such as the importance of speaking clearly to the broader society about illness, learning to deal with pain, and how to manage relations with physicians. She reveals how she learned to continue to be of use to the world by opening up a new area of working toward human rights and reorienting her life as a writer. The book has a strong spiritual dimension in revealing how the meditation and reflection she turned to because of her curtailed activities actually opened her up to a wider life. From these practices she learned to cultivate inner strength, flexibility, and adaptability. Thankful for small pleasures and grateful for what she has, Bouvard shows how true healing means not waiting for a cure, but maintaining a sense of possibility.
"We all have problems that are difficult to confront, difficult to come to terms with. I wish to emphasize that this is a book that can change the lives of the healthy as well as those struggling with illness. I cannot recommend it highly enough."—Santa Cruz Metro Weekly
"Anyone suffering with illness, as well as friends and relatives and healthcare providers and professionals, would find spiritual resonance and inspiration in the connections Bouvard suggests between meditation, and treating the body/mind/spirit with respect and attention to accept and "soar beyond our circumstances to find ourselves."—Healing Ministry
"The most interesting aspects of the book are Bouvard's accounts of how her condition affects her day-to-day experiences and concerns and how this contrasts with the detached, often insensitive way in which she was treated by certain medical practitioners . . . the book is mostly engaging and interesting, and is eloquently written. It would be valuable reading for people who are themselves suffering from chronic illness, to show that it need not preclude them from finding fulfillment professionally and personally. And it would be valuable to the friends and relations of those suffering from chronic illness, to help them to understand what is important to their friend or relation and how they can
best and most sympathetically engage with her."
—Metapsychology Online Reviews
“In a society so uncomfortable with physical vulnerability that it seeks to make the ill invisible, this book reveals the many dimensions of suffering. It creates a social discourse for the dignity, hard work, grief and illumination of illness. It is done with exquisite sensitivity, rich prose and riveting thoughts. Extremely informative for the reader who suffers from chronic illness; but must reading for the friends and relatives of the sufferer; and truly compulsory reading for the healthcare provider."—Dr. Isaac Schiff, Head of Vincent Memorial Obstetrics and Gynecology Service, Massachusetts General Hospital
Click here for TABLE OF CONTENTS
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MARGUERITE GUZMAN BOUVARD received her Ph.D. from Harvard and was for many years a professor of political science and creative writing at Regis College. She has authored books in the fields of politics, psychology, women’s studies and poetry, among them the important The Path Through Grief: A Compassionate Guide and Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de mayo (1998).
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