DIAGNOSED

An overview of the American hospital experience.

“Disease comes with a heavy set of burdens, but it also comes with impossibly beautiful gifts,” writes Snow (CEO of patient engagement agency Snow Companies) in this narrative built around her own multiple sclerosis diagnosis and its aftermath. “As the patient evolves, their loved ones must evolve, too. That means the burdens are shared—and so are the gifts.” This sense of hope found in horrible circumstances animates the book, which starts with illness bringing the author’s old life to a halt: “I’d gone from a vibrant, active, intelligent, engaged person, to someone who couldn’t get out of bed,” she writes. “And when I brought all these symptoms to various doctors, I was misdiagnosed, I was trivialized and placated, and one even said I was crazy.” From her own experiences, Snow has developed a process she calls “The Patient’s Journey.” In these pages, she breaks down what both the patient and the patient’s support group will go through pre-diagnosis, post-diagnosis, and in the long-term. The guide walks readers through the experience of hunting down the appropriate care, finding the right diagnosis, dealing with the slow kind of grief that illness can induce (“the initial grief that comes with a diagnosis is often coupled with relief to finally have a name for what you’re dealing with”), separating one’s self from one’s illness, and many other aspects of this kind of crisis. Snow employs a blunt prose style in an attempt to underscore both the practicalities and the empathy of her narrative, and it largely works—her text is free of the impersonal, anodyne tone that often characterizes books about coping with sickness. “Illness is brutal,” she writes, “but when you start finding ways to give back to others, that impact makes it all easier to bear.” Readers dealing with illness—their own or a loved one’s—will find this book to be a breath of fresh air and a realistic shot of hope.

A tough-talking but ultimately tender guide to dealing with a diagnosis.