If you were diagnosed with a condition for which there was no known
cure, what would you do?
Nick Duerden is a writer and journalist. This is his memoir about a long
period of ill health and how he was forced to plunge, like it or not,
into the often bewildering - but increasingly blossoming - world of
alternative therapy in pursuit of a cure....
He followed strictly regimented, vitamin-rich diets and swallowed all
manner of supplements. He smeared himself in coarse mineral salts and
grew tepid in Epsom salt baths. He visited energy practitioners and
spiritual gurus. He learned yoga, how to meditate, to breathe properly,
to face his fears and manage the new anxieties those very fears had done
so well to engender. Over the course of three years, Nick's lifelong
cynicism is gradually replaced by an open eagerness to try anything, if
not quite everything, and in doing so he starts on the pathway back to
health.
Get Well Soon is a memoir that focuses on the journey all of us will
at some point have to face: the abrupt obligation to start living
better, wiser and healthier, to be kinder to our minds and bodies by
realising that minds and bodies do require care. It's about what happens
to life when you become ill, because everyday life is never going to
stop going about its chaotic business.
This is not a self-help book. But it is, in its own candid, unflinching
and stumbling way, a mapless guide to belatedly learning to live well,
to negotiating a very particular and all too common midlife crisis. It
is honest, and funny, and ultimately optimistic. And it might just offer
proof that self-discovery, even when it is enforced self-discovery, is
no bad thing.
