Lean on Me: Ten Powerful Steps to Moving Beyond Your Diagnosis and Taking Back Your Life

At 33, Nancy Davis was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. The neurologist's finality was devastating: "There is nothing you can do." Nancy left her doctor's office in shock and despair. How could it be that within a year she would be confined to her bed, at best able to push the buttons on her remote control? She had plans, a family, a life that she desperately wanted to live. Nancy made a choice: rather than accepting this hopeless prognosis, she began to educate herself, to create an effective health regimen, and to expand her range of therapeutic options. She literally reinvented her prognosis, and in doing so, created a healthy new life. Life-altering diseases often come with a list of "can'ts" and "won'ts." Nancy teaches readers how to move beyond these negative concepts and focus on what they personally can and will do to improve their health.--From publisher description.

The author, founder of the Center Without Walls (a medical research foundation), has written an inspirational book for anyone with multiple sclerosis (MS). When she was a mother of three small children, she was diagnosed with MS at the age of 33. Her neurologist told her to go home and "go to bed... forever." Determined to have an active life, Davis developed a program to live as fully as possible. First she ditched a troubled marriage and surrounded herself only with people who would support her emotionally. She learned as much as she could about MS, working her way through the maze of medical information and misinformation to find which physicians and treatments would be the most help. In order to remain positive, avoid stress and commit to a healthy diet, she explored alternative approaches (among others, Davis has found homeopathy, acupuncture and osteopathy to be useful for her condition). Davis provides readers with an informed overview of how to negotiate the health-care system as well as Web resources. Today, remarried with two more children, the author, an MS activist, has devised a thoughtful plan for dealing with a devastating illness that should motivate others. (Apr.)
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