Perseverance

Jul 7, 2003

More from the current issue (July 7, 2003) of the New Yorker, this a moving first-person piece by the author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend (watch for the movie soon). Laura Hillenbrand writes about her hellish life with chronic fatigue syndrome, and she stayed on that bucking bronco to write a number-one selling book. What’s even more tear-jerking is the devotion of Borden, her boyfriend and lover, through the many years of ill health.

There’s this maddening paragraph, too:

My psychiatrist had found me to be mentally healthy, but my physicians had concluded that if my symptoms and the results of a few conventional tests didn’t fit a disease they knew of, my problem had to be psychological. Rather than admit that they didn’t know what I had, they made a diagnosis they weren’t qualified to make.

But the finish is just damn redemptive.

Listen to Hillenbrand on the Diane Rehm show of July 3, 2003 – http://www.wamu.org/ram/2003/r2030703.ram

Anton Zuiker ☄