Patient H 69 by Vanessa Potter
Vanessa Potter was a producer, wife, and mother leading a busy, active life in London. One day, after a brief illness, she woke up and realized her eyesight was vanishing. Then she started experiencing numbness in various parts of her body. Her husband, Ed, took her to the ER, where no one could figure out what was going on--and sent her back home. The next day, she was worse, so back to the hospital, where one doctor finally took her seriously and admitted her. Thus began a long journey to figure out what had gone wrong in her body and how to get her old life back.
It turns out Vanessa had a condition called NMO (neuromyelitis optica). And it was through her grit and perseverance that she eventually managed to regain a lot of her motor functions and some semblance of sight (like looking through a dirty windshield), though as she says, rainbows are a thing of the past for her.
It's a compelling book. The first half is Vanessa's diary, where she describes her symptoms and her attempts to "fix" her health. The second half gives more of a scientific/medical explanation of how vision works and what went wrong in her body. And God bless Ed, who stood by his wife through it all even when neither of them was sure she would ever recover.
It turns out Vanessa had a condition called NMO (neuromyelitis optica). And it was through her grit and perseverance that she eventually managed to regain a lot of her motor functions and some semblance of sight (like looking through a dirty windshield), though as she says, rainbows are a thing of the past for her.
It's a compelling book. The first half is Vanessa's diary, where she describes her symptoms and her attempts to "fix" her health. The second half gives more of a scientific/medical explanation of how vision works and what went wrong in her body. And God bless Ed, who stood by his wife through it all even when neither of them was sure she would ever recover.
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