Monday, March 28, 2011

You Are The Guru

Today I finished the memoir Are You My Guru? by Wendy Shanker.  This book was at times both hysterical and heartbreaking.  The author has just completed writing her first book about a dramatic weight loss and accepting her body.  She is also working as a produced at The Oxygen channel when she starts having serious health problems and discovers she has an autoimmune disease called Wegener's Granulamatosis.  Basically, when you have an autoimmune disease your body cells have decided to rage a war on an organ or organs within your own body.  This is what happens in this case.  Wegener's affects the ears, sinuses, throat, and lungs.  She is immediately placed on steroids and later chemo drugs taken both orally and intravenously.

Then essentially all hell breaks loose.  She not only is fatigued, sick to her stomach, experiences headache, and then weight gain occurs due to the steroids she takes.  This gal tries all forms of potential cures.  She does the traditional with medications and lab tests; she tries a detox program, ayurvedic retreats, meditation, acupuncture, and thoughout this process keeps up with the happenings of Madonna because she is a major fan.  She becomes frustrated because by itself none of the potential cures is working.  And she even tries submitting prayers to a Rebbe (Jewish messiah) at midnight by tossing her prayer paper into his gravesite.  Finally, her liver starts to give out and she realizes that she has to be her own guru.  It's not about necessarily finding a cure for chronic disease; it's about appreciating the days you feel well and doing what you think best to take of yourself on the horrible days.  It's about finding a happy medium.  Also, she discovers that there is no one guru (medically or spiritually) that can heal her.  She knows her body best and she chooses what to take from traditional Western medicine and Eastern medicine to help define a new normal or a new frame of health for herself.

I was engaged with this book from the beginning as I also have an autoimmune disorder and know what it is like to deal with beaucoup doctors and many who feel they are medical gods.  No matter what the statistics say or the success of various medications, each person is different.  What works to keep my autoimmune disease in check will not necessarily work for someone my age across the United States who has the very same chronic illness.  The point is no one wins, least of all you if you just throw up your hands and cry.  You are the expert on your body and how you feel; you take that knowledge and the specialists' knowledge and work together to find a peaceful state of living and coping with chronic illness.

Obviously, I highly recommend this memoir especially for people coping with rare chronic illnesses and anyone also trying to navigate the minefield that is currently the U.S. healthcare system.

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