Contemporary Authors

• The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up Random House (New York, NY), 2017

1. The other side of impossible : ordinary people who faced daunting medical challenges and refused to give up LCCN 2016044332 Type of material Book Personal name Meadows, Susannah, author. Main title The other side of impossible : ordinary people who faced daunting medical challenges and refused to give up / Susannah Meadows. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Random House, [2017] Description 302 pages ; 25 cm ISBN 9780812996470 (hardback) CALL NUMBER R723 .M353 2017 CABIN BRANCH Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms - STORED OFFSITE

• NPR - https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/05/02/526436381/a-childs-suffering-drives-a-mother-to-seek-untested-treatments

  TREATMENTS
  A Child's Suffering Drives A Mother To Seek Untested Treatments
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  May 2, 20172:48 PM ET
  HEATHER WON TESORIERO

  Author Susannah Meadows sought alternative treatments for her son when traditional treatments failed.
  Alberto Ruggieri/Illustration Works/Getty Images
  Your child is diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disease and conventional treatments aren't proving to be effective. Doctors prescribe powerful medications that don't seem to work. Not only is your child not responding as hoped, he's withering from the side effects. What do you do? Journalist Susannah Meadows found herself having to answer this question when her son, Shepherd, was diagnosed at age 3 with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, joint inflammation that can last a lifetime.

  When the drugs didn't work, Meadows was persuaded to look at his condition through a different prism and to consider the possibility that medications might not be the only answer. Meadows began speaking to parents who had sleuthed out alternative theories and tried things like radically changing their kids' diets and giving them Chinese herbal medicines. Like many parents of sick children, Meadows grew increasingly willing to venture outside of the standard treatments.

  Her experiences spurred her to seek other stories of people with illnesses ranging from multiple sclerosis to epilepsy to ADHD who pursued unproven methods of treating their diseases. Their stories, as well as an account of her son's case, are compiled in The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up, published Tuesday by Random House.

  Shots sat down with Meadows to discuss her book. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.

  When Shepherd was diagnosed with a case of juvenile idiopathic arthritis, were you initially uncomfortable with him taking the standard drugs for the disease?

  I was very comfortable when the first thing he was prescribed was naproxen, because that was familiar as a relative of ibuprofen. But when that didn't work and he was prescribed an immunosuppressant [methotrexate], I was troubled by the risks. It's a serious drug and it comes with an increased risk of lymphoma and liver disease and for sure, I was very uncomfortable with that.

  And then in the immediate sense, taking the drug made him sick and he spent days on the couch, nauseous every week, and to me, that was an unacceptable life. I could not accept that that was going to be his life. I think the thing that really pushed me to explore other options was desperation.

  The Other Side of Impossible
  The Other Side of Impossible
  Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up

  by Susannah Meadows

  Hardcover, 302 pages purchase

  In addition to keeping him on the methotrexate, we took gluten, dairy and sugar out of his diet. We gave him high doses of omega-3s in fish oil and a probiotic. His arthritis started to get better six weeks to the day after we started the new diet, and we weaned him off the methotrexate. He's now totally healthy, completely without pain, and has been off all arthritis medications for four years. It's impossible to know what made him better, but there's some science that suggests it could have been the diet.

  Your book is a call to arms to think about diet and what we put in our bodies, whether you have serious illness or not. How did food play in the recovery of the people you wrote about?

  Terry Wahls [had] multiple sclerosis and went from using a wheelchair to riding a bike again after she radically changed her diet to eat only nutritionally dense food. You can't come away without thinking, if that can do that for her, what could it do for me?

  The pioneers in your book weren't the trained scientists or the doctors. They were the patients. What can you say about that?

  Certainly doctors know more about disease than I ever will, but that doesn't mean that their expertise is universal. Our own doctor was a good partner in our weighing things to try. We were able to have good conversations about risk, and what I liked about him was his openness — he made it clear to us that he didn't have to understand it if it worked, which to me is a great quality in a doctor. The best doctors recognize that they don't know everything.

  Some key themes emerge in the book about the personality traits of those who seek different avenues of treatment. What are they?

  One of the things that struck me about everybody in the book was extraordinary self-confidence, almost a stubbornness that they would find an answer. These people exhausted medicine's answers and kept looking. Another thing was hope. I used to think of hope as being about the known possibility. You could have hope if even 1 out of 100 people got better. But what was amazing about these people was that they had hope even without an example of one. There was nothing to point to. A woman with multiple sclerosis who's using a wheelchair, it's unheard of to come back from that. And yet she believed she could find a solution for herself. And to me that's extraordinary.

  It seemed like many of the subjects of your book were financially comfortable, which gave them advantages such as moving across the country to be near a practitioner. How can people access experimental diets, supplements or interventions not covered by insurance?

  To be sure, having resources helps, but one of the things that's so exciting about food being a potential solution for some diseases is that it's a lot cheaper than medication. Some medications for multiple sclerosis, for example, can be $80,000 a year. We have strong anecdotal evidence and in some cases, clinical evidence that food can improve symptoms for some chronic disease. The other virtue of food is that it's open to all of us to experiment with. Until we have the data to say this diet will benefit this disease, we are free to see as individuals what might help us.

  Finally, how has the experience of dealing with your son's illness as well as meeting these other like-minded people changed you as a parent and as a person?

  The biggest thing that I have learned is that when it seems as if there are no options, you can still look for them and maybe find them. That you have a choice to keep going when others say that you can't. I don't think I had that feeling when Shepherd was diagnosed, but I think his unlikely recovery taught me that.

  Heather Won Tesoriero is a writer living in New York City. She's currently working on a narrative nonfiction book. The Class will be published in 2018 by Ballantine Books.

• Susannah Meadows - http://www.susannahmeadows.com/about/

  The first writing job I got was by answering a want-ad in the Hilton Head Island, SC, daily paper for an arts and entertainment columnist. When I moved to New York I got two gigs. One was as a reader at the Paris Review for no money. The other was as an editorial assistant at GQ magazine where I wrote—I’m not kidding—about hair products.

  Later, I became a senior writer at Newsweek Magazine. Over the course of a decade there, I had a chance to write about everything. I covered the aftermath of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and, for over a year, the Duke Lacrosse scandal. I also wrote about Hillary Clinton, Serena Williams, bull-riding, the Christian Right, and Columbine. Assigned to John Kerry’s plane, I reported on the 2004 presidential race and later became senior politics editor for Newsweek.com.

  After contributing book reviews to the New York Times Book Review for many years, I started writing the Newly Released column for the paper's Arts section in 2010.

  In 2013, I wrote "The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints," in the New York Times Magazine about my young son's arthritis and our family's efforts to help him get better using a variety of therapies, including changing his diet. The story became the basis of my book, "The Other Side of Impossible," which will be published in May from Random House.

  I live in Brooklyn with my husband, Darin Strauss, and our two boys.

  For media inquiries, please contact Barbara Fillon | Email: bfillon@penguinrandomhouse.com

  For bookseller inquiries, please contact Andrea DeWerd | Email: adewerd@penguinrandomhouse.com

  To schedule Susannah for a speaking engagement, please contact: Brenda Kane at American Program Bureau, Inc. Phone: 617.614.1607 | Email: bkane@apbspeakers.com

  Literary agent: Bill Clegg, The Clegg Agency, Phone: 646-863-1100

• Signature Reads - http://www.signature-reads.com/2017/05/interview-with-susannah-meadows/

  INTERVIEWS
  The Other Side of Impossible: An Interview with Susannah Meadows
  By JENNIE YABROFF
  May 19, 2017

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  Susannah Meadows/Photo © Susannah Meadows

  When a child has something as minor as a flu or a sprained ankle, it can feel impossible to do even the most basic tasks – answering emails, unloading the dishwasher – until your kid feels better. Imagine, then, the will-robbing inertia of having a child with a chronic illness, or a life-threatening allergy. Just guiding them through the day in relative safety and comfort can become a full-time job.
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  Now imagine mustering the energy and strength to confront the wall of medical wisdom telling you your kid will not get better; finding the confidence, or faith, or inspired insanity to say to the entire medical establishment: “you’re wrong.” This is just what several mothers did in Susannah Meadows’ book The Other Side of Impossible. When doctors told these women conventional medicine couldn’t do anything for their chronically ill or severely allergic children (or, in one case, her own illness), they refused to listen. They tried alternative therapies, some extremely esoteric, none of them scientifically proven. And in the majority of the cases, they worked.

  Meadows got interested in alternative medicine and the people desperate or determined enough to try it when her own son, Shepherd, was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis. The conventional treatment – a form of chemotherapy – was toxic, exhausted Shepherd, and wasn’t a cure. So Meadows explored other options, radically overhauling Shepherd’s diet and eventually taking him to a self-described “healer” who taught him mantras and visualization techniques. Five years later, Shepherd is a happy, healthy boy who has completely recovered from his arthritis. The outcomes of the other families Meadows writes about in her book are more mixed, but her message – that when conventional medicine fails, a combination of persistence, faith, and willingness to try anything can make the literal difference between life and death – is compellingly persuasive. She spoke to Signature about balancing being a journalist, a mother, and a crusader for her son.

  SIGNATURE READS: This book began as an article for the New York Times Magazine about your son’s recovery from juvenile arthritis, which was the result of a restricted diet eliminating gluten, dairy, and many other foods. You write at the end of your book that you were “not expecting a second act – that he would one day eat gluten and dairy again.” What were the challenges of writing this book while your son’s recovery was still so new, and continuing to evolve? Did you feel like you were telling a story to which you didn’t know the ending?

  SUSANNAH MEADOWS: I feel I should mention that while Shepherd did recover after we changed his diet, and there are good reasons to believe that the diet made the difference, there’s no way to know for sure what made him better. To answer your question, I definitely did not know the ending to our story when I started the book! In fact, some of the other stories turned out differently than I thought they would. When you write about peoples’ lives over the course of three years, it turns out that things happen. One of the most exciting moments while I was working on the book was when one of the children I was writing about made an unexpected recovery. I’d already written her chapter. I was able to add a happy postscript.

  SIG: Were you surprised by the response to your Times article? What does it say about conventional medicine that so many people seem desperate for alternatives?“...We don’t have enough science at this point to know how to help everybody.”
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  SM: There were plenty of people who had a negative response—those were the ones I expected! I knew that no matter how clear I was that there was no proof that the protocol we tried with Shepherd would help other people, there would be those who would object to my talking about anecdotal evidence. The reason I thought our story was worth sharing was that I knew that there was at least a chance that the diet experiment we tried with Shepherd was the reason he recovered. And because it wasn’t risky, I didn’t feel I had the choice not to get the information out to other parents. The one response that did surprise me was from two prominent rheumatologists. They said that our son had suffered because his treatment was delayed, which was completely incorrect. The article stated clearly that we started him on medication the day of his diagnosis. It struck me as incredible—and ironic—that they were complaining about a lack of evidence for diet changes when they got their own facts wrong. The best responses were from people who wrote me—and continue to write me—to tell me that they tried what we tried and found recovery.

  I agree that people are desperate for answers, not necessarily as alternatives to medicine, but when they’ve tapped out what conventional medicine has to offer. What are you supposed to do then? Just accept that you’re sick or that your child is sick? Certainly when conventional medicine did little to help my son’s arthritis, and, at the same time, made him feel sick, I couldn’t accept that that was going to be his life. And, by the way, I think doctors are frustrated too that we don’t have enough science at this point to know how to help everybody.

  SIG: You are a journalist, and trained to approach stories with a certain amount of skepticism. How did you overcome that skepticism both for your own son, Shepherd, as well as in talking to other people who had experienced miraculous results by altering their diets?

  SM: In my case, as in others, I think it was pure desperation. As a journalist, yes, I tend to be skeptical. And I certainly used to dismiss therapies that lacked clinical evidence that they worked. But as a desperate mother, I didn’t have that luxury. I could have called my book “The Upside of Desperation.” Because it opened my mind to other possibilities, however unproven. That said, I don’t think I lost my skepticism. I was very clear-eyed embarking on a diet experiment with my son. I considered it a longshot that it would work, but because it wasn’t risky, I felt I couldn’t not try. In telling the stories of other families who took on other illnesses and found luck on their own, I was careful to be forthright about what was known and what wasn’t. I certainly didn’t want to give anyone false hope. At the same time, I dug into the literature to see if there was any science that could explain why these people, including Shepherd, recovered. I was surprised to find quite a bit of compelling research.

  SIG: One of the things I really appreciated about your book was how compassionate you were towards everyone you write about, while at the same time acknowledging that some of their ideas might seem like hocus pocus to the unconverted. In writing the book, how did you balance the viewpoint of the average reader, who might not have experience with alternative therapies, with your own growing belief in their efficacy?

  SM: One of the advantages I had writing about other people who’d tried all sorts of things to get better, was that I’d been through it myself. I’d lived all the same doubts and fears. But I’m still a journalist, so I shared the skeptical perspective of the uninitiated. My belief that a diet can have an impact on autoimmune conditions, for example, did grow, but it was from talking to scientists about the emerging evidence.

  SIG: Which story was the most difficult to tell? Why?

  SM: My own family’s, by far. I was extremely uncomfortable writing about myself and our experience. It’s private! I would have liked not to, I just didn’t feel I had that option if someone else might be helped. My husband, who’s a writer, and I went back and forth: “You do it.” “No, you do it.” “No, you do it.” because I really didn’t want to. In the end, I recognized that because I was a reporter and he was a novelist, it made more sense for me to do. Amy Thieringer’s story was also incredibly challenging. She’s the one who has developed a therapy to treat children with severe food allergies. But some of the things she does don’t relate to anything we know about biology. There is not an explanation. But her anecdotal results are very compelling. So I wrote and rewrote parts of her chapter many times to try to find the write language and tone for how to deal with the material.

  SIG: You write about the stress chronic illness and allergies can create for families, and how several of the marriages of your subjects suffered. How did it impact you to be writing about your own family as well as managing Shepherd’s condition? How did he feel about being a subject in your book?

  SM: I only wrote about our family after Shepherd recovered from arthritis. I was such a basket case while he was suffering that I was capable of very little beyond taking care of him, having him sit on my lap for the entire day. He was really pleased to be in The New York Times—he asked to fetch the paper from our stoop the morning his story came out in the magazine. When the book came out, he took it in to school for show and tell. At the same time, he’s mindful that his twin, Beau, feels a little left out. It was Shepherd’s idea for me to dedicate to the book to Beau.

  SIG: All of the stories you tell are about women, either mothers searching for treatments for their children, or women trying to heal themselves. Do you think there is an inherent difference in the way men and women approach disease and health? Did you talk about this with Amy Thieringer or any of the other healers you write about?

  SM: I was interested in this too, and reached out to some experts. One psychologist said that while it was impossible to draw conclusions from such a small sample, one reason that everyone’s a woman in my book could be that women still do most of the childcare and are also socialized to be more comfortable asking for help. But resilience and persistence are not particular to women.

  SIG: Many of the mothers you write about follow a modified version of the diets they try with their children. You write a lot about what Shepherd eats, but I’m curious how closely you followed his restricted diet when he wasn’t eating gluten or dairy, and if you noticed any changes in yourself, and also what your diet is like now that he can eat most foods again.

  SM: As a family we adopted Shepherd’s gluten-free, dairy-free diet at home. I remember, though, in the middle of it, our friends had my husband and me over. They said, “We need to get some bread and cheese in you people. “ We ate these amazing grilled cheeses and had such stomachaches afterward! The funny thing is that now that Shepherd eats everything again, my husband and I stay off gluten! We both feel better. The bigger shift in all of our diets has been toward eating many more vegetables. After spending time with Terry Wahls, the woman in the book with MS, it would have been impossible not to make that change. She was using a wheelchair, and now, after adopting a diet of 12 cups a day of berries and vegetables, she’s riding a bike. Plus there’s a lot of compelling research that supports the benefits of a high fiber diet for all of us.

  SIG: I imagine one of the most controversial aspects of your book is the idea that life-threatening food allergies can be overcome through a combination of desensitization, visualization, mantras, acupressure, and affirmations – that the mind can convince the body not to have an anaphylactic reaction to foods such as peanuts, dairy, or wheat. What sort of response have you gotten from the conventional medical establishment to this approach? Why do you think conventional medicine tends to be so hostile towards alternative therapies?

  SM: While I was working on the book, I reached out to prominent allergy researchers to get their thoughts about the therapy you describe above. I was surprised that they were not dismissive at all. They were all intrigued. One of them even said that he believed that the psychological component of an allergic reaction was clearly part of the story. I think the hostility you refer to is for therapies that haven’t been proven to work that are used in place of therapies that are supported by evidence. But western medicine has nothing to offer people with severe food allergies, or many of the other diseases in my book, so the things that people tried aren’t an alternative to anything. The researchers I spoke to also understood that new ideas can often seem weird before they’re proven to work and become normal.

  SIG: Do you have any updates on any of the people you write about? Will you continue to follow their stories for a follow-up article or book?

  SM: Yes! The little girl with epilepsy, whose story had the unexpected happy ending, continues to do well. When I finished the book, she’d just had the surgery to remove the tumor that was thought to be causing her seizures. It’s now a year later, and she hasn’t had a single seizure, and she’s thriving. Also, you may remember that Jamie Stelter, of chapter 8 fame, was trying to get her rheumatoid arthritis under control so she could focus on getting pregnant. Well, her baby is due next week, I’m happy to report. And, yes, I will keep up with everybody because I will always care about what happens to them, but I’m ready to write about something totally different.

• New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/well/live/hitting-a-medical-wall-and-turning-to-unproven-treatments.html

  Hitting a Medical Wall, and Turning to Unproven Treatments
  Personal Health

  By JANE E. BRODY MAY 1, 2017

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  Credit Paul Rogers
  What if you or your child had a chronic illness that seriously limited or threatened life, and modern medicine had no effective or acceptable treatments to offer you?

  Imagine you were plagued by severe food allergies, rheumatoid arthritis, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or intractable epilepsy. Would you be willing or desperate or brave enough to step outside the realm of established medicine and seek help from an unconventional therapist — even someone with no medical or scientific training?

  What if you heard about others in a similar situation who had tried a purported remedy that appeared to work, or the method seemed to make biological sense?

  In her new book, “The Other Side of Impossible,” Susannah Meadows, a Brooklyn-based former senior writer for Newsweek, has compiled compelling stories about people who faced and ultimately surmounted daunting medical challenges. The book focuses on several families, including her own, who felt they had no choice but to wade into the world of unproven therapies.

  The families’ ventures into a realm that some would call quackery were typically inspired by love, desperation and hope, and were fueled by irrepressible grit and determination to find solutions to debilitating health problems that defied the best that conventional medicine could offer.

  Continue reading the main story
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  Their stories left me in awe of their persistence against formidable odds. As one mother replied when asked how she persevered through a five-year search for a way to control her daughter’s relentless seizures: “You can’t not try. She’s not better yet.”

  In her analysis of the disparate yet related cases, Ms. Meadows highlights at least three important influences on well-being that have yet to receive their just due in understanding what might cause or aggravate certain intractable medical disorders.

  One is a characteristic called “leaky gut,” essentially tiny holes in the intestinal walls that allow proteins to reach the bloodstream where they can trigger a vicious immune attack on healthy tissues.

  Another is an imbalance of microbes in the gut and how communication between the brain and the gut can adversely affect behavior and emotional stability. A third is the still underappreciated interaction of mind and body, especially the effect that anxiety and fear can have on the body’s response to otherwise harmless substances.

  There is perhaps a fourth factor, Ms. Meadows said in an interview, that seems to foster perseverance in seeking recovery from an incurable condition: “Early life experiences in coping with adversity that may inoculate people against hopelessness and prompt them to believe that if they would just keep trying they would succeed.”

  Or as the son of one patient profiled in the book put it: “Courage is knowing you’re licked and doing it anyway.”

  That patient was Dr. Terry Wahls, who overcame a progressive form of multiple sclerosis for which medicine had little to offer.

  Once confined to a reclining wheelchair despite trying a range of conventional treatments, Dr. Wahls researched, then adopted, a diet that eliminated grains, dairy and sugar but included 12 cups a day of berries and vegetables supplemented with grass-fed beef, organ meats and oily fish. She combined this with neuromuscular electrical stimulation and exercise.

  Within a year, Dr. Wahls had ditched her motorized assists and started riding a bicycle. Eight years later, she shows no signs of her disease. Last summer, the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, which has been tracking research into diet and inflammation, committed more than $1 million to study the effect of her diet on M.S.-related fatigue.

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  Ms. Meadows summarized the overriding lesson derived from the people in her book: “You have a choice to keep going when others say you can’t. They had no reason to think they could succeed, but they just wouldn’t give up.”

  Ms. Meadows said this was not something she understood when her son Shepherd was given a diagnosis at age 3 of polyarticular juvenile arthritis, a crippling condition affecting multiple joints.

  She and her husband were told he was unlikely to outgrow it. Facing a choice of doing nothing or treating him with a potent drug that “made him feel bad and did little for his arthritis,” she learned about a child with the same condition who was helped by avoiding gluten and dairy products and taking fish oil, probiotics and a Chinese herb.

  “With nothing to lose — if it helped one child, maybe it will help ours,” Ms. Meadows said. “In terms of hope, an example of one is very important.” And as she reported four years ago in an article in The New York Times Magazine, Shepherd got better.

  Eventually, with the help of a self-styled healer named Amy Thieringer, who emphasizes the need to calm fear and anxiety when trying to counter food sensitivities, Shepherd was gradually reintroduced to gluten and dairy and “now eats everything without any problems, no more painful, inflamed joints,” his mother said.

  Although Amanda Hanson was warned by her son Hayden’s allergy specialist that attempting Ms. Thieringer’s treatment for the boy, who had life-threatening allergies to 28 different foods, would be playing Russian roulette with his life, she felt she had no choice but to try.

  Inspired by the testimony of other mothers facing a similar problem, and knowing that doctors had no solution for Hayden’s allergies, Ms. Hanson bought into the Thieringer program known as allergy release technique.

  Borrowing ideas from cognitive behavioral therapy, Ms. Thieringer first worked to ratchet down Hayden’s fear of certain foods before introducing them in tiny increments until he could consume them in normal amounts without a reaction.

  Now 16, Hayden has had no bad reaction to any food since completing the program six years ago.

  As a careful journalist, Ms. Meadows make no claims for cures. Her book is not prescriptive, though it describes the science that might explain the unlikely recoveries she has written about.

  “I’m a journalist reporting on the fact that there is a whole community of people who are looking for, and in some cases finding, answers to health problems on their own.”

  151
  COMMENTS
  There is another important message in this book worth mentioning, and that is the enormous obstacles to producing ironclad evidence for the kinds of approaches that brought relief to the people Ms. Meadows interviewed.

  The treatments often involved a combination of interventions and few, if any, profit-making products. Thus, no company is likely to pay for the needed studies, which would also probably be too costly and complicated for government agencies to underwrite.

  A version of this article appears in print on May 2, 2017, on Page D5 of the New York edition with the headline: When Patients Hit a Medical Wall. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susannah_Meadows

  Susannah Meadows
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Susannah Meadows is an American journalist. She is the author of the book "The Other Side of Impossible" about people facing difficult illnesses who find ways of getting better on their own. In the book, one boy who has severe food allergies undergoes an unconventional therapy and is soon eating everything. A physician with MS creates her own combination of treatments and goes from a wheelchair to riding a bike again. A child diagnosed with ADHD refuses to take medication and instead improves his life, and the life of his family, after changing his diet. Other families take on rheumatoid arthritis, intractable epilepsy, and autistic behaviors.

  The book originated with a personal experience that Meadows wrote about in the widely viewed New York Times Magazine article, "The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints." The 2013 article was about her young son's unexpected recovery from juvenile idiopathic arthritis. The article received such an overwhelming response that the editors gave the entire letters to the editor page over to it. It topped the most read and most emailed lists for a week.

  She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times. Most recently she wrote the Newly Released column for the Arts section, as well as book reviews. She has written reviews for the Sunday Book Review section since 2002.

  For ten years she was a reporter, writer, and editor at Newsweek magazine. The stories she’s covered include the 2004 presidential campaign, the aftermath of 9/11, Columbine, Hurricane Katrina, and the Duke lacrosse scandal. She has appeared on CBS This Morning, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, Charlie Rose, and The Brian Lehrer Show.

  She is a cum laude graduate of Duke.

  She is married to the novelist Darin Strauss.

  External links[edit]
  Susannah Meadows's New York Times Magazine story "The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints"
  Susannah Meadows's appearance on Charlie Rose about The Duke Lacrosse Case
  Newsweek Cover "In Defense of Teen Girls"
  Newly Released Books column for the New York Times
  New York Times Review of "Bringing Up Bebe

• Penguin Random House - https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/220877/susannah-meadows

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR
  Susannah Meadows is a former senior writer for Newsweek. She has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times, writing a column for the Arts section about books. During her career she has covered the 2004 presidential campaign, the aftermath of 9/11, and the Duke lacrosse scandal, among many other stories. She has appeared on CBS This Morning, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, ESPN, Charlie Rose, and The Brian Lehrer Show. She lives with her husband and twin sons in Brooklyn.

• The National Book Review - http://www.thenationalbookreview.com/features/2017/6/1/qa-a-mother-takes-on-her-sons-impossible-disease-and-wins

  Q&A: A MOTHER TAKES ON HER SON'S "IMPOSSIBLE" DISEASE -- AND WINS

  Susannah Meadows just published her first book, but she’s been a writer for a long time. I remember receiving letters from her more than 20 years ago, during our respective college semesters abroad (from Duke University) and marveling at her ability to capture the seesawing joy and anxiety that defines young adulthood. A letter from Susannah was always a treat – a few folded pieces of paper that captured her generosity of spirit and sharp intellect.

  These days, Susannah and I talk on the phone far more often than we write; the schedules and responsibilities of (very!) early middle age do not easily lend themselves to languorous musings on the meaning of life.

  And Susannah has been busy -- juggling a journalism career, twin boys, and her marriage to fellow writer Darin Strauss. In 2013, the New York Times magazine showcased her story, “The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints,” about her son Shepherd’s diagnosis of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, and the family’s (ultimately successful) efforts to combat the disease with a combination of medical and alternative treatments. To say that the article made a splash would be a spectacular understatement.

  A book deal soon followed, and this spring, Random House published Susannah’s debut book, The Other Side of Impossible. Shepherd’s story is a prominent part of the narrative.

  I’ll just cut to the chase here and tell you that The Other Side of Impossible is a wonder: A meticulously researched book that’s also loaded with hope and humor. The book profiles families who have faced devastating diagnoses, diseases with no known cure or even effective treatments -- who push beyond medical “possibility” to build their own therapies, often with staggering results. Gorgeously written and unflinchingly honest, it belongs on every family’s bookshelf.

  I caught up with Susannah recently, and asked her a few questions about her experience as a first-time author, the emotional impact of telling personal stories, and her failings as a self-promotion machine. -- Jessica Reaves

  Q: First, congratulations on your book! Has it been a whirlwind? Are you exhausted? Has the book release/publication experience been what you expected, or have there been surprises?

  A: Thank you! So far, the experience of publishing a book has been almost entirely different from what I expected. I spent so much time worrying about how it might be negatively reviewed that I hadn't thought about the nice words that might come my way. I've been moved by reviews that readers have posted online. They've been really thoughtful and personal. One woman on Amazon wrote that she read the book in one sitting, got up to feed her service dog, then sat down to read it again. There was also the review with the headline, "Garbage." So, a little less thoughtful, but it did make me laugh.

  Here's the best example of the unexpected: I was invited to talk about the book on Fox & Friends. When I was in the green room, waiting to go on, I was chatting with a political consultant. He was the third person there to tell me that the president could very well be watching. Think of how weird that is. The consultant told me to say, "Mr. Trump, if you're watching, this book is important to the healthcare debate." But I just couldn't do it. I am not a natural saleswoman. Luckily the two women who interviewed me sold the book better than I ever could have. They were incredibly generous. The ultimate surprise: within a couple hours the book shot up to #3 on Amazon.

  Q: I'm really curious about how you approached the subject matter, because you're a seasoned journalist, but you're also a mom with a personal stake in these stories, and I can imagine there were times when objectivity wasn't necessarily possible -- or even optimal. You write, in the book, about taking on these stories first as a parent, and then as a journalist. Can you talk a bit about the emotional vs. intellectual process of writing the book?

  A: I was extremely uncomfortable telling my family's story. When my husband was working on his memoir years earlier, I'd asked him if it would be at all possible for him to leave me out of it entirely--not even mention my existence. But when our son, Shepherd, unexpectedly recovered from arthritis, and we knew it could have been from the experimental diet change we tried, we felt we didn't have a choice not to share the information with other parents. So I wrote our story out of a sense of obligation. Then when I started hearing about all these other people who'd taken on impossible illnesses and found ways to get better on their own, I reverted to my journalist self. Their stories were incredible--and I couldn't wait to tell them. But writing these women's stories felt different from anything else I'd ever done. We knew what the other had been through so there was a connection there from the start. For example, when I flew out to San Francisco to meet one of the families I was writing about, the mom opened the door and said, "Can I hug you?" I had a moment of wondering if it would be okay. But of course it was, and she did. I don't think that having a personal stake affected my objectivity. I think it made me work extra hard to make sure that readers would understand the people I wrote about even if they disagreed with their choices. Having covered a lot of crime and politics, I wasn't used to feeling inspired by the people I wrote about!

  Q: Your son Shepherd's story features prominently in the book, and I think it's so lovely that you dedicated the book itself to your other son, Shepherd's twin, Beau. How aware are the boys of the book? Have they had any notable response to it, or the publicity surrounding it? Or are they just like, "Oh, that's what Mom does during the day. She writes this book."

  A: Their dad and their aunt write books, so it’s not such a big deal to them that I’ve written one now too. But Shepherd did ask to take a finished copy in to his class for show and tell. He read the last paragraph, which is about him, aloud to the other students. He’s also offered a review: “The book is wonderful, even though I haven’t read it.” I’ll take it!

  Q: While your book is about families and science and taking a leap of faith, it's also very much about women. Because in the stories you tell, it's the women -- single, married, mothers -- who pushed back against what was considered "possible." Do you think there is something inherently female about the kind of determination you profile in your book? To put it another way, what do these women have in common that compelled them to take matters into their own hands, even when things looked very bleak?

  A: We’re better? I’m kidding. But I wondered the same thing, and a psychologist told me that persistence was not particular to women. Plus, we can’t draw conclusions from such a small sample. So what made them so determined? I thought it was interesting that almost everyone I wrote about in the book had overcome difficult circumstances earlier in life. There’s some science to support the idea that that kind of experience may influence how helpless or not you’ll act the next time things get tough. It's also common sense.

  Q: You've been traveling to talk about and promote the book. What has the audience response been like? I imagine people at the book events and signings want to ask you all kinds of questions about bacteria and yeast and gluten -- and maybe fecal transplants. Have you had any notable exchanges with would-be readers?

  A: People have been lovely. They have some questions, but mostly those who come up to talk want to tell me their own stories. Because illness can be so isolating, I think there’s some comfort in knowing the experience is shared. Probably the most notable exchange was when one guy told me he liked eating books. I took it as a complement. Plus, he’d already paid for his copy. One of my kids’ favorite books is “The Incredible Book-Eating Boy.” I couldn’t wait to tell them that the boy was real and he lived in Temecula.

  Jessica Reaves, who was a journalist at Time Magazine and the Chicago Tribune Magazine, is a writer and editor based in Denver, Colorado.

• Oprah.com - http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/parents-facing-daunting-medical-challenges

  A Story That Will Inspire Hope for Anyone Facing a Medical Challenge
  A new book features near miraculous stories about patients who wouldn't quit—even when their treatment did.
  By Meredith Bryan

  Illustration: Mouni Feddag

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  When journalist Susannah Meadows's 3-year-old son, Shepherd, developed juvenile idiopathic arthritis, medicine did little to relieve his pain. So Meadows took matters into her own hands, putting her son on a special diet (for example: no to gluten, yes to fish oil) while keeping him on his meds. Several months later, Shepherd, who had been limping, was pirouetting and running.

  As Meadows began doing research for an article about her experience, she heard of other patients who'd found ways to get better on their own. Their stories—compiled in Meadows's book, The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up—involve cases of multiple sclerosis, food allergies, intractable epilepsy, and ADHD. While the microbiome of gut bacteria, thought to influence health and immunity, features prominently, this is not an ode to green juice or gluten avoidance. Meadows is more interested in unpacking how her subjects found hope—and relief—in the face of dispiriting diagnoses. We asked her to share what she's learned about unconventional healing.

  O: How is your son doing?

  Susannah Meadows: He's a regular 9-year-old who doesn't even remember what arthritis felt like. I often take a moment to think how lucky we are.

  O: The most amazing thing wasn't that the eating plan seemed to help; it was the "healer" who was able to reintroduce gluten and dairy to his diet.

  SM: Yes, Amy Thieringer—she's a nutrition and health coach—has no medical training, but while treating children with severe food allergies, she had the insight that some symptoms of anaphylaxis resemble severe anxiety. So she started addressing the fear of eating certain foods using elements of cognitive-behavioral therapy. And Thieringer saw similarities between Shepherd and children with allergies: Their bodies were mistakenly registering food as a threat. We can't be sure that's why Shepherd can tolerate those foods now, but she's had so much anecdotal success that researchers have launched a pilot study of her methods.

  O: Do you believe we can use our minds to cure disease?

  SM: No one is saying hope is a cure. But there are so many compelling studies on the mind-body connection. One of my favorites suggests that practitioners who are kind and project confidence can have a major impact on their patients' recoveries without prescribing drugs.

  O: How did you keep despair at bay when your son was in constant pain?

  SM: I didn't! That's part of why I wanted to write my book—to figure out how the people I profiled were able to have hope. Many survived challenging childhoods. Long before Terry Wahls reversed her MS symptoms, for example, she had to deal with growing up gay in a conservative community in Iowa in the '50s and '60s. Another mom who tenaciously pursued a cure for her son's severe food allergies had been abandoned by her father. I thought of these women when I talked to a neurobiologist who found, in a study of rats, that those who overcame a difficult circumstance when they were young were inoculated against helplessness. If someone in my family were to get sick again, I'd be more hopeful this time.

  Illustration: Mouni Feddag

  O: Many of the medical professionals you spoke with acknowledged that certain diets do seem to help alleviate symptoms of conditions like ADHD, arthritis, and MS. Why don't doctors prescribe them more?

  SM: There is a lack of published science to support diet as a cure. Most of the research in this country is funded by private companies, and eating habits are not something you can patent and sell. Diets are also very hard to study. One reason is that we aren't blind to what we eat, so having a placebo control is tricky.

  O: When should we listen to our healthcare provider, and when should we become our own "primary care doctor"?

  SM: We don't have to choose between trusting our doctors and looking elsewhere for answers. I have full confidence in my son's rheumatologist, but that doesn't mean I don't ask questions and research possibilities that might not fall within his expertise. Patients are finding treatments developed outside Western medicine and using them in conjunction with drugs or when medicine doesn't have an answer. If there's no risk, why not try?

  MEDICINE LABELS Non-mainstream therapies used together with conventional medicine are considered "complementary." Practices that replace standard medical treatment are "alternative." Want more stories like this delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the Oprah.com Healthy Body newsletter!

  Read more: http://www.oprah.com/inspiration/parents-facing-daunting-medical-challenges#ixzz51U9BCjHe

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Print Marked Items
Meadows, Susannah: THE OTHER SIDE
OF IMPOSSIBLE
Kirkus Reviews.
(Apr. 1, 2017):
COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Meadows, Susannah THE OTHER SIDE OF IMPOSSIBLE Random House (Adult Nonfiction) $28.00 5, 2
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9647-0
Can eating the right food play a major role in healing medical problems?Rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile
idiopathic arthritis, ADHD, severe seizures, multiple sclerosis, and food allergies related to peanuts, gluten,
dairy, soy, and a host of other allergens--these are just some of the medical issues explored by former
Newsweek senior writer Meadows in her first book. Most of the author's interviewees are parents of
children with these serious, sometimes life-threatening illnesses who have tried every conventional medical
method--most often, prescription drugs--to help their children lead healthy lives. But when those traditional
methods have failed to produce long-term positive results, they have turned to alternative methods, often as
a last resort, and been overwhelmed by the drastic, progressive changes. Highly attentive to important
details, Meadows takes readers through the agonizing months and years of pain, suffering, anxiety, and fears
that these parents and adults faced as they tried to find solutions to their medical issues. As the author
discovered, food played a significant role in all of these situations. Once the diet was changed, the
symptoms changed, and the children improved, primarily because the body's gut bacteria, or microbiome,
had changed. Other methods Meadows clearly discusses include fecal pills and enemas, identifying the
mind-body connection between food and its allergic reaction in the body, and the importance of positive
feedback and the drive to feel better. Although the author doesn't outline a specific diet, she includes enough
information about foods that helped others for readers to piece together their own menu and do their own
experimentation to help overcome some of these debilitating diseases. The author's helpful additions
include further resources, websites, a sample menu, and bibliography, as well as references to the many
doctors and practitioners interviewed in the text. Encouraging, honest information and real-life cases that
show the role food can play in healing the body.
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Meadows, Susannah: THE OTHER SIDE OF IMPOSSIBLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General
OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487668475/ITOF?
u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=40eb18be. Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.
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The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary
People Who Faced Daunting Medical
Challenges and Refused to Give Up
Tony Miksanek
Booklist.
113.17 (May 1, 2017): p47.
COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/ala/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist_publications/booklist/booklist.cfm
Full Text:
The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to
Give Up. By Susannah Meadows. May 2017.288p. Random, $28 (9780812996470); e-book
(97808129864571.610.1.
Mainstream medicine doesn't always have an answer. Meadows brings to light multiple cases of recovery in
which conventional medical care had little left to offer, and frustrated, anxious, and desperate patients or
their parents sought alternative (nontraditional) or complementary remedies. The stories portray a young
woman with rheumatoid arthritis, an infant with severe food allergies, a boy with ADHD, a girl with
recurrent seizures and possible autism, a woman with multiple sclerosis, and the author's son, who was
diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis. Some successful treatments include elimination diets (typically
no gluten, sugar, dairy), adhering to vegetarian diets, pushing probiotics and a sundry of supplements, fecal
transplant (administering stool from a healthy donor to a sick patient), and a BioScan machine with a wand
that delivers electrical currents. Throughout these tales, a common attitude binds people together: hope. It is
difficult to draw definitive conclusions from these anecdotes. Other explanations are possible--placebo
effect, spontaneous remission, perhaps misdiagnosis. But what cannot be refuted is the will power,
perseverance, and hopefulness of the patients and families profiled here. --Tony Miksanek
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
Miksanek, Tony. "The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges
and Refused to Give Up." Booklist, 1 May 2017, p. 47. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495035005/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=573898d4.
Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.
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The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary
People Who Faced Daunting Medical
Challenges and Refused to Give Up
Publishers Weekly.
264.16 (Apr. 17, 2017): p64.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to
Give Up
Susannah Meadows. Random House, $28 (320p) ISBN 978-0-8129-9647-0
At age three, journalist Meadows's son Shepherd was diagnosed with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis.
Concerned about the side effects of traditional medications, she entered "the healthcare underground" of
patients struggling with chronic, debilitating autoimmune illnesses and willing to look at complementary or
alternative strategies for treating and defeating them. This book presents the stories of several people who
found relief through new, still-unproven approaches such as dietary changes or fecal transplants. Meadows
is skeptical in the best sense, considering the treatments, as well as the character traits of her subjects, as
potential keys to success. She never sufficiently acknowledges that her stories are anecdotes, not conclusive
research, but she has confidence that they point to real solutions. Her purpose is to "suggest potential targets
for new research," and she does so with writing that's compelling and fair. When presenting a case, she is
balanced, as in discussing Terry, a doctor stricken with multiple sclerosis, who subdued her illness through
medicine, diet, meditation, physical therapy, strength training, and massage. This is a terrific book for those
who need encouragement to take control of their diagnoses, and for their physicians and families. (May)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to
Give Up." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 64. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490820846/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=89825606.
Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A490820846

"Meadows, Susannah: THE OTHER SIDE OF IMPOSSIBLE." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Apr. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A487668475/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 16 Dec. 2017. Miksanek, Tony. "The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up." Booklist, 1 May 2017, p. 47. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A495035005/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 16 Dec. 2017. "The Other Side of Impossible: Ordinary People Who Faced Daunting Medical Challenges and Refused to Give Up." Publishers Weekly, 17 Apr. 2017, p. 64. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A490820846/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF. Accessed 16 Dec. 2017.

• Psychology Today
  https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-resilient-brain/201711/the-other-side-impossible
  Word count: 1282

  Diane Roberts Stoler Ed.D.
  The Resilient Brain
  The Other Side of Impossible
  When traditional medicine isn't enough, where do you turn?
  Posted Nov 19, 2017
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  The Other Side of Impossible
  Ordinary people who faced daunting medical challenges and refused to give up
  Recently, I read the book The Other Side of Impossible by Susannah Meadows. The book contains several true-life stories, including the main story about Susannah’s son, Shepherd. Shepherd was diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). His joint pain and stiffness was the beginning of a long and painful journey.

  with permission from Susannah Meadow
  Source: with permission from Susannah Meadow
  The Other Side of Impossible introduces readers to resilience in the face of challenging health conditions that left patients and their families searching for answers when traditional medicine simply wasn’t enough.

  This book completely resonated with my own life story and that of several of my patients. My motto, which you see throughout my website is Help and Hope…There is a Way!®.

  Susannah’s book provides readers with just that. Help, hope and the knowledge that there may be a way when you’ve been told there isn’t.

  Where do you turn?
  When treating a health issue, medical doctors generally offer two solutions: either some form of medication or some form of surgery. Occasionally, they may suggest some form of physical therapy, speech therapy, and even psychotherapy depending on the condition. They may even mention acupuncture. Rarely do they recommend a change in your diet.

  So too with Shepherd. He was given medication that did not help his continually worsening condition enough and also made Shepherd feel sick. Susannah and her husband, Darin, were also concerned about the drug’s side effects and wondered if there might be another option.

  My Personal Journey
  Similar to the real-life stories in this book is my own journey. When doctors told me that I would not get better or make any further progress after sustaining a brain injury, I took my recovery into my own hands. Lucky for me, I am a neuropsychologist and with my professional expertise along with perseverance, I found a way to regain my life.

  I spent years exploring complementary and alternative treatment methods that helped me. There were many dark days and feelings of despair until I was able to see progress and a way of out of the darkness.

  In order to share my knowledge and help other brain injury survivors and caregivers, I co-authored the book, “Coping with Concussion and Mild Traumatic Brain Injury”.

  Help and Hope
  For Shepherd's symptoms, there wasn’t a guide like my book offering specific conventional, complementary, and alternative treatments. However, Susannah heard about another mom, whose son also had been diagnosed with JIA and had recovered after taking certain foods, including gluten and dairy out of his diet, and adding in fish oil and probiotics. She was a friend of Susannah’s sister’s husband’s friend and she agreed to talk to Susannah over the phone to walk her through what she’d done to help her son.

  Susannah and Darin discussed the other mom’s protocol with Shepherd’s doctor, and he was okay with trying it. Six weeks later, Shepherd woke up and announced that his knees didn’t hurt anymore, before running out of the room. While it’s impossible to say what made him recover, the diet change seems like a likely explanation. Later, when he accidentally ate gluten-containing foods, he felt pain in his joints again.

  Dr. Diane Roberts Stoler
  Source: Dr. Diane Roberts Stoler
  This revelation was similar to how I discovered my Brain Health diet. Years before my accident in 1990, I had problems speaking. My ear, nose and throat doctor said it was caused by my sinuses and required surgery. It was suggested to me that I should see an Allergist, before undergoing surgery. I did just that, and lo and behold the allergy testing indicated that I do have food allergies. From there I went on a six-month food elimination diet and discovered what foods would cause my hoarse voice. Once I changed my diet, all of my symptoms went away. I did not need surgery, medication, hospitalization, or further testing.

  After my accident, to address the inflammation from my brain surgery, cerebral bleed and the bodily injury from the sixty-mile an hour auto crash, I included anti-inflammatory foods into my diet. Then again to treat inflammation, chronic pain, and other symptoms of Lyme Disease, changing my diet, was key to improving my health.

  Another true-life story that Susannah presents in her book is about a girl named Tess, who had seizures. She tried medication after medication but nothing could control her seizures. Changes in her diet seemed to alleviate some of her daughter’s autistic symptoms but the seizures were relentless. Her mother refused to accept that she could not find an answer for Tess. They tried everything various doctors suggested, as well as more experimental therapies like cannabis. The seizures kept coming. Finally, 10 years into the ordeal, Tess’s mother took her to yet another doctor who finally found the benign brain tumor that was causing the brain to over fire.

  Once again, reading this story, I could relate to my own situation when, in 2008, I was diagnosed with a benign brain tumor called a meningioma in my prefrontal left lobe. My doctors said I could experience seizures or bad headaches from this. With my extensive background in hypnosis, I started using hypnosis and the right foods, which have reduced the size of the tumor and I have not had any seizure or headaches!

  Tess’s family was never given this option since the tumor was overlooked by the first two neurologists. Nor was neurofeedback or dietary changes ever suggested. They were extremely lucky to have found the right neurologist who discovered the tumor. Tess underwent surgery to remove it and is now seizure-free.

  There is a Way!®
  Susannah’s book takes the reader through the real-life pain, suffering, frustration, and fear that comes with chronic, debilitating autoimmune illnesses, as well as the help and hope that dietary changes can bring. An experienced journalist, she digs into the science of how and why food can impact disease. What is notable throughout this book is the struggle of the various families trying to find methods and solutions that will help, when the medical establishment is not providing any support when surgery and medication are not the answer.

  With perseverance and hope, you can achieve the other side of impossible. I truly know this from experience. In January 2016, I was diagnosed with one of the rarest forms of lymphoma (see my lymphoma story and methods of treatment). I was told by an oncologist, if I didn’t undergo chemotherapy and radiation, I would be dead within six months. I refused, found another oncologist, and as you have read, through a change of diet and other nutritional methods, along with neurofeedback and hypnosis, my tumor has shrunk. I’m still alive to write this blog today.

  So, do I believe and endorse what Susannah Meadows has written in her book, The Other Side of Impossible? You bet I do!

  The Other Side of Impossible is a must read!

  Copyright © Dr. Diane Roberts Stoler, November 2017.

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