An Illness and a Healing
A Whole New Life
An Illness and a Healing
In 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord ("The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward"). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life.
Beyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here -- a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer's much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means all) doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the "now appalling, now astonishing grace of God."
A Whole New Life offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.
- Scribner |
- 224 pages |
- ISBN 9780743238540 |
- June 2003
Where Does Author Reynolds Price Find His Inspiration? Find Out Now!
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Reading Group Guide
- Price's account of the medical community is often devastating, while differentiating the care provided by physicians from that of nurses and other therapists. Why are many physicians unable to respond to their patients in a human way?
- Does knowledge of the various stages of the grief process actually help when you are grieving? How can we use this knowledge to better help us deal with crises?
- How do we deal with both the physical and psychological pain in our lives? Is pain and suffering the result of some wrongdoing on the part of the sufferer?
- The author attempted to control the pain of cancer through the use of metaphors or pictorial language. How important do you think Price's ability to describe his condition was to his eventual recovery?
- The "whole new life" that Reynolds Price built was an aesthetic creation consisting of literature, poetry, music, art, humor and laughter. Do you think of these aesthetics as luxuries or as basic necessities of life? How can the aesthetic play a greater part in our own daily lives?
- Dreaming was crucial to Price's recovery. How do our dreams affect our lives? How can we learn to listen and respect our day dreams as well?
- Like the author, we all must rebuild our lives after tragedy strikes. How do we go about this process? What do we need to be told and by whom? What support do we need?
- Throughout his ordeal, Price is sust