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Summary: Would like an update on Duf's condition
Review: I enjoyed this book and would lovean update on Duf's condition. Toward the end of the book, shementioned the mass found in heruterus. Was it serious? Has shebeen able to conceive a child?Does anyone have an update?
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Summary: ABSOLUTE MUST-READ!
Review: I could not put this book down! It was intelligent, hilarious, educating, touching, and enthralling (not to mention every other positive descriptive adjective!)Anyone would enjoy this book. I suggest it strongly for anyone who likes to read. I especially think that anyone living with a chronic disease or who knows or loves anyone living with a chronic disease will gain a lot of insight (and possibly a change of attitude & outlook) from this book. I was very surprised at how well it read and how easy it was to read considering the heavy subject matter. The funny thing is- at the end, you don't close this book feeling sad or depressed. You feel tickled (and happy that you didn't just waste your time on another book that wasn't satisfying) and humble. Don't miss this one! A+++++++++++++++
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Summary: Hope for People with Sarcoidosis
Review: Karen Duffy's book is an inspirational and witty account of her struggles with sarcoidosis. For those of us diagnosed with this mystery illness, this book offers hope and inspiration. For the rest, a glimpse is offered into the world of one who deals with debilitating circumstances while continuing to manage and live life to its fullest. And two thumbs up for bringing public awareness to an otherwise obscure and rare disease!
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Summary: Enjoyable Reading
Review: I just completed reading this book today. I found it a very interesting book about this fascinating woman. Having read it, I still don't know how she finds the strength to go on with the awful disease she has, but I've come away impressed by her ability. She's had quite a life to date, and I hope another book follows down the road where we can learn how she has kept on racking up more achievements despite the roadblocks. I especially liked reading of her working at a nursing home, and the old souls she met there.
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Summary: The absolutely best book on illness I've ever read
Review: To be honest, I had never heard of Karen Duffy before I read this book. (I'm in the over 50 set and no longer watch MTV). But I have numerous medical problems myself, including breast cancer, and Karen's book caught my eye at the bookstore. I'm so glad I bought it. It cheered me up and gave me tons of hope and encouragement. I figure if she can get through years of chemotherapy and other awful medical procedures, and still keep laughing, then so can I. I highly recommend this book and plan to read it again whenever I start to feel sorry for myself.
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Summary: Great, inspirational summer reading
Review: Karen Duffy's book was amazing. The subject matter is quite serious, but she handles it with flair and humor unlike any I have come across. Too often books dealing with illness center around medical aspects, but this book was much more about life and how it was affected. It was an excellent book, one of my alltime favorites
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Summary: Great Book...Great Story...
Review: Karen Duffy takes on a very serious illness and emerges the winner! She realizes that the illness is not who she is but that it is something that must be contended with and face. In a sense, Karen found the secret of life in that she came to understand the big picture--events are not the person--you are what you eminate from your heart. The only mild criticism I had is that Karen soft peddled the nontraditional medical treatments. It would have been best for her to have left that chapter out--it added nothing to the book. I loved the part about Whit Crane of the band "Ugly Kid Joe" who Karen dated. I think Whit was the most lively soul in the book and had more substance than Karen suspected when they dated. His role in the book made it all the more fun.
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Summary: Live It Up and Never Give It Up
Review: She's ill, not ill-willed! Masked in a memoir about coping with disease, Karen Duffy uses jaded humor to exact happy-go-lucky revenge on the doom and gloom of well intended but ultimately pathetic sympathizers. Instead of focusing negatively on pain or privacy, she elaborates what few people have, most of us envy, and she's fighting to keep: success. However, "success" pales in accordance with the face of illness when health drips out of an IV tube. Her former life was perhaps a literally picture perfect standard, interrupted but never crushed by illness. She's not the life of the party anymore, but no wilting pansy either! Who doesn't secretly covet money, dream of wild parties til ungodly hours, crave liquor and chocolate splurges, unlimited funds and flawless beauty? Even for those among us too upright to admit it, some particle of our being does recognize the allure and the illusion of youth's freedom unfettered. Despite the circumstances, Duff lives it up and never gives it up, but isn't too self-absorbed to skip Mass the next morning or share personal insights during a spinal tap. Surprisingly down-to-earth, "Model Patient" is a wickedly irreverent take on illness that cuts through the fluffy fodder of pop culture's glamour and glitz, but refuses to dwell on sickness and suffering. Highlighting "good days" but being realistic about the bad ones, it appeals to the common heart and soul, the quality beyond success: sincerity.
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Summary: She just might be crazy too...
Review: This book reads more like a personal letter than a autobiography. Its light and fun and sometimes outright hillarious. Although the subject of her living with a chronic debilitating disease is sobering, you get the feeling she'd punch you in the mouth if you dared try to console her or feel sorry for her in anyway. Her unquenchable thirst to extract as much fun out of life at every moment should be an inspiration to us all.
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Summary: Schizophrenic biography of an illness and a life...
Review: Separating Karen Duffy's disease from her writing...the book is just badly written. Aside from her liberal use of self-serving anecdotes about the popular men she dated, the most notable instance of name dropping is in the publishing of this book. If Karen Duffy, a minor celebrity, were not the author, this book would never have made it to print, and there would certainly be no audience for it. This is a book about a woman who insists on spending time on her honeymoon in Paris trying to replace a cherished nun's ring she always wears, after she winkingly tells about taking her priest out for drinks so he'll waive the Catholic premarital counseling requirement. Huh? This book is trite and superficial; the only think remotely interesting about this model is her disease.
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