Saturday, October 31, 2020

Review: Diary of a Detour by Lesley Stern

 Dear Literary Loves,


Greetings!  I've been away from my book reviews recently taking care of family illness and my own chronic illnesses.  I truly miss my local book club meetings, but since we are in the midst of a pandemic and the book group meets on Zoom, it has just not been my cup of tea.  

In recently weeks I had a family member diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia which is a blood and bone marrow cancer.  Her initial symptoms appeared to be fairly mild with swelling in the legs and ongoing fatigue.  Obviously, I felt for this family member as I lost my father to a rare subtype of Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  He battled that disease for twelve years.  Naturally, I was quite interested in putting my eyes and hands on reading material regarding Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia in hopes of not only better understanding it myself, but also so I could potentially pass along helpful information and advice to my relative.  During my search, I came upon a memoir that was soon to be published by a professor who was diagnosed with CLL and subsequently wrote about her experience.  The key word in that last sentence is "experience".   When I write or read a memoir I expect to at least be able to plot a time sequence particularly if it involves a serious illness.  So I just want to establish from the beginning that I never found any kind of sequencing and very little communication of the CLL experience in the book titled Diary of a Detour by Lesley Stern.  

Here's what I did glean from Ms. Stern's book:  She was diagnosed with CLL and evidently did not immediately require treatment.  This appears to be a slow-growing cancer.  Mainly, the author discusses how she distracts herself from concentrating on the disease in many creative forms.  First, she has a group of chickens, all of whom she names and can detail their personalities for you.  She has a cat named Elvis who actually brings her great comfort, but in the latter portion of the book, the cat's demise is brought about by the author's neglect of having the cat treated for a recurrent tumor on his leg.  Was it related to her perhaps not wanting to know the status of her own cancer or live in denial of it??  I could never clearly tell.  She is wildly fascinated with chickens in Mexico and the differences between chickens in Mexico and the United States.  

Next, the reader does hear about the author receiving immunoglobulin treatments inside a cancer center, but not to the degree necessary, in my opinion, to be able to explain to a fellow patient what to expect should they face similar treatment.  At this point in the book, I was totally frustrated.  And I am a former English teacher who had to make a concentrated effort to force myself to continue reading this memoir.  The middle portion of the book has the author taking a trip to Australia against the advice of her own oncologist.  And I believe she calls a friend who knows a physician and she goes with his recommendation to take a different medication during her trip and get on with the trip.  I admired the author's spunk, but at times I felt it was to her own demise.  She appears fascinated with Aboriginal art caves in Australia and the landscape, but I still was left wanting to know more about the CLL experience.  

I really became frustrated and flabbergasted when upon returning from Australia, the author decides she is going to take up the fermentation of cheese.  At some point during this portion of the book, she makes a reference to comparing cheese and death.  I think it had something to do with eating that which is decomposed (cheese/death) and then finding something wonderful eventually through the cheese's flavor (the afterlife}?  Interestingly, she does convey the frustration of losing someone you once knew who now lives in another part of the world.  When that person died, a part of her that had experienced life with that person also died.  And she felt losing those closest to us might just actually be harder for us than facing our own death.  Interesting and valid points I must say.  

At the end of the book, she hints at her cancer returning in a major fashion and delves into some detail about treatment of CLL with monoclonal antibody treatment vs. CAR-T therapy.  At that point I felt I needed to go find the Duke University Medical Library and just teach myself all the potential treatments should I or anyone I know ever become diagnosed with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.  At the end of the book, the chickens she loves begin to die, the cat Elvis has expired, she worries about the person with whom she is most close (I assumed her significant other) and then basically signs off with the expression that everyone should get on with living and maybe we'll all meet in the afterlife??

I am not one who requires fancy, poetic, or singing prose on the page.  I do not require over glorified, elegant writing,  I do look for some communication of the experience about which you are writing and hope to be able to, after having read the book, to also be ready to recommend it to others.  Sadly, I am unable to do that with this book.  I hope to find a memoir about CLL that leaves me more knowledgeable about the subject and grateful for the way the author clearly communicated the experience and also inspired me in the process.  It was most definitely not the case with this memoir.

Till Next Time,

Grace

(Amy)