{"id":4253,"date":"2021-11-24T00:29:16","date_gmt":"2021-11-24T00:29:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=4253"},"modified":"2021-11-24T00:29:52","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T00:29:52","slug":"the-deep-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2021\/11\/24\/the-deep-places\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deep Places"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Show Me Where it Hurts<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Ross Douthat’s new memoir is a work of courage.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Review by Whitney Rio-Ross<\/em><\/p>

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I began reading Ross Douthat\u2019s The Deep Places <\/em>on a bright afternoon, sitting on my couch and trying to keep my dog on his designated cushion, away from the crisp book jacket. Thirty minutes later, I was horizontal and crying, my dog draped over me like a weighted security blanket. This is not my usual reaction to the first chapter of a memoir. But it didn\u2019t feel like reading a memoir; it felt like reading my own life from five years ago, when I began my own struggle with a chronic illness.<\/p>

Douthat has lived with the maddeningly mysterious Lyme disease for several years. The Deep Places <\/em>focuses primarily on his years of trying to cure himself by whatever means necessary, but it begins with Douthat\u2019s life situation just before the tick bite that would infect him. We meet him as a political writer with a growing family about to move to a farmhouse in the charming Connecticut countryside. He\u2019s young, healthy, intelligent, and financially secure. Every horror story needs a sunny introduction, an unsuspecting character cheerfully escaping to a remote location.<\/p>

This beginning isn\u2019t simply a plot device, though. It\u2019s a reminder that chronic illness doesn\u2019t happen in a vacuum. Ross Douthat is not Lyme disease, but a person<\/em> who must live with Lyme disease. That\u2019s a lot more interesting, complicated, and tragic.<\/p>

Throughout the book, Douthat weaves together his own personal experience and the history and science of Lyme disease itself. He and his disease are intertwined, and the prose reflects that. His career as a journalist comes in handy when describing the history of Lyme disease. These informative chapters are genuinely interesting, even for those who don\u2019t have any experience with Lyme disease. They are not an encyclopedia entry on Lyme but a story about the people plagued by it for decades. He is far from the only one who has suffered. Douthat wants his readers to know that as he shares the disease\u2019s origin tale and widens the focus to include anecdotes from anonymous posters on Lyme community websites.<\/p>

After reading this history, it seems impossible that a disease that has infected and disabled so many people should still have such insufficient treatments and unreliable tests. How can doctors know so little and shrug off patients when they say that their debilitating pain persists despite taking their prescribed antibiotics? Well, what usually keeps important things at a standstill? Politics.<\/p>

Generally speaking, doctors are divided into two camps regarding Lyme\u2014the medical establishment and the weirdos. Douthat calls one of the doctors he saw \u201cThe Reassurer\u201d and another \u201cThe Maverick,\u201d two embodied examples of the different mindsets. The Reassurer was confident that Douthat would eventually get better with the \u201cright\u201d pills. When he didn\u2019t, doctors in the Reassurer\u2019s camp decided that the problem wasn\u2019t Lyme but rather the patient, especially since he hadn\u2019t tested positive for Lyme (on a test that misses many cases). Anyone with a chronic illness can identify with Douthat\u2019s frustration and despair in the face of such doctors. On the other hand, The Maverick had seen plenty of patients\u2019 symptoms persist despite the usual antibiotics and was willing to push boundaries and look into other forms of treatment, even if his colleagues would laugh at him. He listened to his patients and believed them when they described their symptoms despite taking their prescriptions. Yes, some doctors in The Maverick\u2019s camp lean a bit too far into the conspiracy theorist role when they are shunned by the medical establishment, but many of them could contribute much more to the search for a cure if bureaucracy didn\u2019t push them to the margins. As we have all seen during the pandemic, and as Douthat explains in his chapter on COVID-19, politics can easily get in the way of our compassion for those who are physically suffering.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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My patience for Christian truisms and theorizing physical suffering has thinned.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Douthat\u2019s memoir isn\u2019t simply an autobiographical case study, though. He describes his sensations, pain, and emotional distraught in detail. (As any person with a serious chronic illness knows, that alone risks sounding at least a tad overly dramatic.) He shares the embarrassment of having to sell their farmhouse as they fell into financial distress. He admits the ways that he failed his family when he was at his worst.<\/p>

Near the end he makes the riskiest confession, listing the weirder and weirder treatments he tried based largely on anecdotal evidence from the Lyme internet community. He notes at the beginning of that chapter that it might be uninteresting to those who don\u2019t have or treat Lyme, and he gives readers permission to skip it if they are tired of reading about the actual disease. I understand the impulse to include that note, but skipping that chapter is a terrible idea. It\u2019s the grittiest not only in terms of the conflict between science and pseudo-science but also the emotion; the two meet as he comes to something like a breaking point in that chapter, finally trying one of the strangest treatments in a (successful) last-ditch effort.<\/p>

That chapter is also the most spiritually interesting. Douthat is a Catholic, and his religion appears several times throughout the book. It is not, however, as central to the book as I had feared it might be. Although I am a Christian and my faith has seriously shaped my experience with chronic illness, I am tired of religious explorations of disease and suffering. Most theology of suffering is bad, if not downright heretical. My patience for Christian truisms and theorizing physical suffering has thinned. The Deep Places <\/em>remains focused on an embodied experience. Yes, Douthat wants to make sense of \u201cwhy\u201d he is sick and what it might take for God to heal him. He writes about his prayer life, including one prayer followed by an intense physical reaction. Those passages felt familiar and will be important for people of faith trying to live with a chronic illness, but I imagine some readers will find the religious element lacking. To that I say God bless him for not pretending his life is a tidy parable.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Physical pain is terribly lonely; silent pain is the worst loneliness I have known.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Of course the problem with any memoir that tackles a marginalized experience\u2014being a person of a particular gender, race, sexuality, disability, etc.\u2014is that it will not represent everyone\u2019s experience. These memoirs are often given the impossible burden of representing the <\/em>experience of being in that category. Douthat\u2019s journey with Lyme is not the story of everyone with a chronic illness. Some patients have better luck with treatments approved by the medical establishment; some suffer with a less supportive family; some chronic illnesses, even when properly treated, prove fatal. But a memoir is the story of one person. Douthat is careful to acknowledge this limitation many times in the book and includes anecdotes from other Lyme patients with similar or entirely different experiences. Lyme and other chronic illnesses are notorious for their range of symptoms and responsiveness to treatment. Fellow sufferers (and those trying to understand them) shouldn\u2019t look for their own memoir here. Reading a memoir as someone else\u2019s story is the best way to let it meet us. Amazingly, this book met me on the first page.<\/p>

Sometimes we forget how lonely we\u2019ve been until we realize we are not alone. I try not to think about the beginning of my own sickness, when my pain and strange symptoms began to flare. Douthat\u2019s journey reminded me of how awful it was\u2014the indifferent doctors, ambivalent blood tests, unsuccessful treatments, and the overwhelming fear that I was either insane or dying. He made me face how awful it can still be. This book revolves around the question of how crazy a man is willing to look\u2014how crazy he must<\/em> look\u2014to find healing. Though I found two excellent doctors and am on medications approved by the medical establishment, I am still terrified of sounding crazy. So I lie. I tell people that I am getting better because that\u2019s what they want to hear. I don\u2019t tell my doctor about some worsening symptoms because I want to sound reasonable. So many people with chronic illness settle for loneliness instead of healing. Physical pain is terribly lonely; silent pain is the worst loneliness I have known.<\/p>

The Deep Places <\/em>is a work of courage. I can\u2019t imagine revealing myself to the degree that Douthat does. It is a profoundly personal book, yet so many passages are exactly what I have wanted to say for years. I thank Ross Douthat for sharing his pain because it felt like I was finally sharing mine, our eyes locked in mutual exhaustion. But he\u2019s also daring me to look ahead with him, to speak truth, to seek healing, even to\u2014God help me\u2014hope.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Whitney Rio-Ross <\/strong>holds a Master’s in Religion and Literature from Yale Divinity School. Her writing has appeared in <\/em>Sojourners, <\/em>Reflections, <\/em>American Magazine, <\/em>LETTERS JOURNAL, <\/em>The Cresset, <\/em>St. Katherine Review, <\/em>The Other Journal, and elsewhere. She is the author of the poetry chapbook <\/em>Birthmarks and lives in Nashville, Tennessee, with her husband.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The Deep Places: A Memoir of Illness and Discovery<\/strong> was published by Convergent Books on October 26, 2021. <\/em>Fare Forward thanks the publisher for providing an advance copy to our reviewer. You can purchase your own copy on their website here<\/a>. <\/em>
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Ross Douthat’s new memoir is a work of 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