Learning Sickness: A Year with Crohn's Disease

Rating:
Summary: A Crohn's book unlike any other
Review: Having been diagnosed with Crohn's disease over 20 years ago, I have tried to read most of the books that are available on the subject. This book by Jim Lang is by far the best book when it comes to really telling what it feels like to have crohn's disease. He really gets down on paper the experiences and feelings that we deal with daily in a clear, straightforward manner/ I highly recommend this book not only for fellow Crohnies but for friends and family of Crohn's patients - and for medical personnel that treat us. It is a must read that you won't be able to put down!

Rating:
Summary: What a fellow crohnnie has to say
Review: I have read the book, "Learning Sickness: A Year with Crohn's Disease by James M Lang.
As a fellow crohnnie I found myself "hooked" on this book. It was hard to put it down.
It has been a very long time since a book has done that to me. I have had crohn's disease now for about 13 years and have never in all these years been able to relate to a book about CD like I did with James Lang's story.

Professor Lang, "You took the word's right out of my mouth and you read my mind!"

Need I say more?
Yes. Jim wrote in chapter 6, the last paragraph, something that I have never been able to put into word's. Something I have always wanted to put into word's and never could. Professor Lang is creative, sensitive, and clever in his writing in this book.

This is a book that every IBD patient will want their doctor to read!

Lisa B.

Rating:
Summary: An eloquent, down-to-earth chronicle of chronic illness
Review: I picked up this book simply because I wanted to read a good memoir. Little did I know what else it would give me. Just a week after I ordered an advance copy of the book online, my 44 year old brother died as a result of complications from ulcerative colitis, a disease that I later learned is very similar to Crohn's disease. Reading Jim's book was an important part of my grieving process; his narrative gave me insight into the everyday experiences my brother must have had with his own health -- and I gained new respect for his struggle.

Jim Lang has written an eloquent, piercing, yet down-to-earth chronicle of life with Crohn's disease. This book is the best kind of creative non-fiction: a memoir that tells the truth in a self-reflective but non-detached way. I highly recommend this book not only to those with connections to Crohn's, but to anyone seeking to understand the depth of human experience through memoir.

Rating:
Summary: He tells it like it is
Review: James Lang reminded me of all the pain, fears and heartaches that most Crohn's patients experience in the early stages of Crohn's disease.

I've lived with Crohn's and its realities over 30 years since being diagnosed in college, and Jim covers all the bases. As an English professor and author, he skillfully addresses the multiple bathroom visits, constant early denial, self diagnosis (it's just indigestion), travel paranoia, and middle of the night hospital trips. They should give frequent flier miles for IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) hospital stays.

Most importantly, he personailizes the effect that chronic illness has on many aspects of life - family, marriage, friendships, faith, career, and self confidence.

"Learning Sickness" will benefit anyone who has or knows of someone with Crohn's disease, Colitis or almost any other chronic condition. It just doesn't go away. Fortunately, we have some people like Jim Lang, brave enough to share their story.

Rating:
Summary: An Important Book for All of Us.
Review: This is an extraordinarily wise book. It is a delight to find that an author as young as Jim Lang can have reached conclusions about himself and about how he wants to carry on in the world; usually we look to people decades older than the author for such wisdom. The book relates the author's experiences during a single year in which his Crohn's Disease moves from being an annoying presence in his life to center stage, threatening his life, his relationship with his wife, and his ability to succeed as a college professor. Lang had been diagnosed some ten years prior to the year chronicled in this book, but as he candidly admits, he treated his disease as something outside of himself, something to be ignored, never to be discussed. But a powerful attack, which is untouched by his usual medications, causes Lang to embark on a year-long process of self-discovery. He learns that he cannot separate the disease from himself - it is part of who he is and he needs to accept its ability to render him helpless at times. He comes to understand that it is only by talking about the disease both to himself and to those who ask about it can he construct the narrative of his life - a narrative of strength that is based on reality, rather than on self-delusion.

As the year unfolds, we come to see how Lang opens himself to his wife, his colleagues, and especially to his two young daughters. His growing relationship with his family is an especially moving part of this book. A tale of a day spent at the beach collecting shells and examining tide pools with his daughters is enough to make any parent misty-eyed!

I picked up this book because I suffer from a chronic disease ("Chronic Pelvic Pain") that shares a number of similarities to Crohn's Disease: modern medicine doesn't know what causes it and can only offer medication to deal with a few of the symptoms; the medications have side effects and are only partially effective; like Crohn's Disease, Chronic Pelvic Pain ties one to the bathroom. (I share Lang's plea for more clean, accessible public bathrooms; I have had many experiences when I have been writhing with pain, almost unable to walk, only to be turned down by a stony-faced store clerk, citing "company policy.")

Even though I learned a good deal from this book as a fellow suffer, I believe that its audience is well beyond those of us living with chronic diseases. Initially, this is an important book for anyone who has a friend or loved one suffering from a chronic condition. But even more than that, this book is full of wisdom for any person facing life. Lang urges us to put pain and bad times in context and to seize life fully and with joy.

This is an important book. In addition to all that I have written, it is a pleasure to read. Lang clearly knows how to write well, so it is a pleasure to read.