The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery
NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS’ CHOICE • In this vulnerable, insightful memoir, the New York Times columnist tells the story of his five-year struggle with a disease that officially doesn’t exist, exploring the limits of modern medicine, the stories that we unexpectedly fall into, and the secrets that only suffering reveals.
“A powerful memoir about our fragile hopes in the face of chronic illness.”—Kate Bowler, bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason
In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, D.C., to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain--a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which according to CDC definitions does not actually exist: the chronic form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of tens of thousands of people but has no official recognition--and no medically approved cure.
From a rural dream house that now felt like a prison, Douthat's search for help takes him off the map of official medicine, into territory where cranks and conspiracies abound and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment and experiment on themselves. Slowly, against his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that many of the cranks and weirdos are right, that many supposed "hypochondriacs" are victims of an indifferent medical establishment, and that all kinds of unexpected experiences and revelations lurk beneath the surface of normal existence, in the places underneath.
The Deep Places is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle back toward health with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the depths there is always hope.
“A powerful memoir about our fragile hopes in the face of chronic illness.”—Kate Bowler, bestselling author of Everything Happens for a Reason
In the summer of 2015, Ross Douthat was moving his family, with two young daughters and a pregnant wife, from Washington, D.C., to a sprawling farmhouse in a picturesque Connecticut town when he acquired a mysterious and devastating sickness. It left him sleepless, crippled, wracked with pain--a shell of himself. After months of seeing doctors and descending deeper into a physical inferno, he discovered that he had a disease which according to CDC definitions does not actually exist: the chronic form of Lyme disease, a hotly contested condition that devastates the lives of tens of thousands of people but has no official recognition--and no medically approved cure.
From a rural dream house that now felt like a prison, Douthat's search for help takes him off the map of official medicine, into territory where cranks and conspiracies abound and patients are forced to take control of their own treatment and experiment on themselves. Slowly, against his instincts and assumptions, he realizes that many of the cranks and weirdos are right, that many supposed "hypochondriacs" are victims of an indifferent medical establishment, and that all kinds of unexpected experiences and revelations lurk beneath the surface of normal existence, in the places underneath.
The Deep Places is a story about what happens when you are terribly sick and realize that even the doctors who are willing to treat you can only do so much. Along the way, Douthat describes his struggle back toward health with wit and candor, portraying sickness as the most terrible of gifts. It teaches you to appreciate the grace of ordinary life by taking that life away from you. It reveals the deep strangeness of the world, the possibility that the reasonable people might be wrong, and the necessity of figuring out things for yourself. And it proves, day by dreadful day, that you are stronger than you ever imagined, and that even in the depths there is always hope.
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Community Reviews
I don't agree too much with Ross Douthat, but he showed up as a witness on a trial I had and he seemed like a fine fellow so I thought I would check out his book. And it's a book about a mysterious illness, which I always find fascinating.
Douthat and his wife decided they were sick of DC and their rapidly gentrifying neighborhood there. They wanted to get back to their New England roots and found a lovely old farmhouse in Connecticut, a dream house to start their new rural lifestyle. But right from the beginning, this fantasy was doomed. Probably from the first walk-around on the property, he was bitten by a deer tick and contracted Lyme. He had debilitating symptoms -- excruciating pain, spasms, digestive issues, etc., etc., etc. And they kept shifting and changing. Even worse, doctors kept telling him it wasn't Lyme, and wanted to prescribe anxiety meds and advised him to see a psychiatrist. So began his long, arduous journey with chronic Lyme disease and the world of alternative treatments that his pre-illness self would have scoffed at.
When he showed up at trial, he had a little bit of a "deer in the headlights" look, wondering what in the world he was doing there, but maybe he was just very focused on masking the residual pain. You just never know what people are going through...
I hope he's continued to improve.
Douthat and his wife decided they were sick of DC and their rapidly gentrifying neighborhood there. They wanted to get back to their New England roots and found a lovely old farmhouse in Connecticut, a dream house to start their new rural lifestyle. But right from the beginning, this fantasy was doomed. Probably from the first walk-around on the property, he was bitten by a deer tick and contracted Lyme. He had debilitating symptoms -- excruciating pain, spasms, digestive issues, etc., etc., etc. And they kept shifting and changing. Even worse, doctors kept telling him it wasn't Lyme, and wanted to prescribe anxiety meds and advised him to see a psychiatrist. So began his long, arduous journey with chronic Lyme disease and the world of alternative treatments that his pre-illness self would have scoffed at.
When he showed up at trial, he had a little bit of a "deer in the headlights" look, wondering what in the world he was doing there, but maybe he was just very focused on masking the residual pain. You just never know what people are going through...
I hope he's continued to improve.
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