Strong at the Broken Places: Voices of Illness, a Chorus of Hope

This book which is written by Richard Cohen, a man diagnosed with MS several years ago delves into the lives of other chronic disease human beings and how they are emotionally dealing with life, specifically theirs. I have been diagnosed with several chronic diseases and through letting Mr. Cohen through his first book into my life I now am able to realize how lucky we all can be. I am in the process of reading book number 2 and the irony of it is that a relative of mine has been diagnosed as bipolar and when I finish this book I am sure the most important part of the disease the humaness I will be able to help him with. Getting angry does nothing, Laughing and Smiling causes people to respond to you in kind. Support groups become a life line and people your potential cure. Thank you Richard and your family for sharing you journey with a world full of chronic disease recipients. Ruth DK 2/20/08

Richard Cohen has done a masterful piece of reporting and research on five uniquely different persons. From Denise with ALS, Buzz with Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma, Sarah with Crohn's Disease, Ben with Muscular dystrophy,and finally to Larry with Bi-polar disorder & Manic Depression! All of these physical and mental disorders have common outcomes which are named in the final Reflection of RMC before the Harvard Medical Doctors! Since I am coping with both Parkinson's + Prostate Cancer, I am drawn to several of these, along with Richard the Narrator. He has the personal touch to place the reader into each story. In my case he gave me new inspiration, hope & courage! Larry Fricks' is the most difficult to read with all of his bouts with Alcohol, Depression, Breaking the law, being in Jail, Attempts at suicide, Hospitalized more than once, hooked on Thorazine! (I can identify with that) Two marriages to Kimi and Grace, with only the last one being successful! Also Richard reports his illness as turned-around to positive near-healing being a Journalist and Advocate for other Mentally Ill. He finally became a spokesman for the first Mental Health Conference of the Surgeon General in Washington at the White House! I read this very slowly in many sittings! Although it is tough reading, it has positive outcomes, especially in the Reflections. Recommended to all who relate to any of these disorders or hopefully, one not-yet discovered. Retired Chaplain Fred W Hood

Cohen's literary ease drew me in right from the beginning; I had a hard time putting it down. Vibrant descriptions of five people's lives. What I like about it is the author's honesty and willingness to put himself in the spotlight and his feelings about who he is writing about. He gets into the nitty gritty of denial, fear and anger (and how it can be helpful). Just a warning, have the tissue handy!

An eye-opening, compassionate and very honest look at the way many people with chronic illness choose to approach life in order to make it a life worth living. Not for childish, immature or me-centered people. Its message changed me, for the better. Thank you, Mr. Cohen!

I won't lie to you. This is a hard book to read. Oh, it's not because of Richard Cohen's writing. His style is as graceful, conversational, and flowing as readers of his earlier Blindsided came to expect. And it's not because the subject matter of the book--coping with chronic illness--isn't both intrinsically interesting and relevant to our own lives. In a day when medical science keeps us alive longer and longer, many of us who are now healthy are likely to be looking at chronic illness down the road. 90 million Americans already endure chronic illness. And that's what makes this book a difficult read. It's too relevant. As Cohen says, "welcome to your future." Cohen, himself one of the chronically ill (MS and cancer survivor), profiles five people who cope with chronic illnesses. Two are kids, three are middle aged adults. The illnesses are ALS, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, MS, Crohn's Disease, and bi-polar disease. Through extensive interviews with these people, as well as his own personal experience, Cohen explores the entirely new world we're thrown into when chronic illness strikes us. It's a world none of us are prepared for, and we have to grope our way toward answers to the new set of questions that confront us. How to deal with the ensuing anger? the panic? the loss of control? How to realistically acknowledge one's condition without allowing it to absorb one's whole being? How to deny in a fruitful way? How to cope with the healthy world, whose members are indifferent, terrified by, or clueless when it comes to chronic illness? Doubtlessly each reader will be especially moved, because of his or her personal circumstances, by one of the five chronically ill folks profiled by Cohen. Denise, the ALS sufferer, particularly speaks to me. A dear friend of mine died of ALS. So did my wife's father. In reading Denise's sometimes panicky, always smoldering, efforts to cope with a disease that inevitably destroys the body while leaving the mind intact, the brutality of my friend's ordeal came rushing back to me: his conviction that ALS had ruined his life without teaching him any great life lessons, his feeling of being cheated, his almost unspeakable terror at the thought of "lockdown" (the state in which the ALS has progressed to total paralysis and the patient's consciousness is "locked" into an immobile body), his despair at the steady loss of self-reliance. Still, there is hope in this book, although it's a hope that's sober and realistic. The people profiled here know that their diseases are incurable. Three and probably four of them will die of their chronic disease. Yet each of them struggles to live while they can. They struggle for self-control, to be brave for others, to make some kind of future for themselves, and to learn what can be learned from their growing dependence on others, their heightened sense of the fragility of life, their increased appreciation for the little things that they once took for gr