The disease is dangerous because it will often attack the muscles of breathing, resulting in death if the patient is not placed on a respirator. Sinai Hospital with the diagnosis of Guillain-Barr,e Syndrome, an uncommon, progressive paralysis of unknown cause. Within 24 hours he had become a ward of the intensive care unit at New York's Mt. In the fall of 1981, the 58-year-old Heller suddenly found himself unaccountably weak in the legs and unable to swallow. People magazine, however, is concse and entertaining. Joseph Heller and his friend and co-author Speed Vogel have given us the People magazine approach to Guillain-Barr,e Syndrome. Unhappily, that is not the book that emerges from this experience. Veteran of war, author of four skilled and successful novels, donor of the concept "Catch- 22" to the language, Heller is eminently well qualified to write a gem of an essay on the agonies of sudden paralysis and the months of hospitalization and rehabilitation that followed. So it does not come as a surprise that when novelist Joseph Heller emerged from a year-long battle with Guillain-Barr,e Syndrome, he should set about telling his tale. The public's fascination with things medical and a general tendency toward candor in matters of health and the human body have helped make the autobiography of illness a successful and useful genre.
Stewart Alsop wrote about cancer, Michael Halberstam about his heart attack, Norman Cousins about a rare and aggressive arthritic condition and William Nolen about cardiac by-pass surgery, to cite a few.
This phenomenon has not been lost on established writers, who in recent years have produced a number of autobiographical works that have told us much about life, sickness and death. I do not mean to celebrate sickness but rather to suggest that a salutory aspect of being ill is the chance to measure our lives from a different and often instructive point of view. From them we are obliged to pause and observe more than we are accustomed to. The hospital beds, the wheel chairs, the sun porch are marvelous retardants in their way. It slows people down and invites them to take a look at themselves and their world. The author of "Vital Signs: A Young February 23, 1986
0 kommentar(er)
