Customer Reviews

The Five Gifts of Illness: A Reconsideration

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is a must read for anyone who has ever been diagnosed with a chronic illness or any acute life threatening disease (cancer, such as myself). This book is a true gift...when someone is diagnosed and you do not know what to do for them or what to say...this book is the perfect gift! The FIVE Gifts of Illness: A Reconsideration thoroughly discusses the different phases one goes through when diagnosed, after when coping, and when moving forward with life. If you are stuck and cannot reach acceptance, this book gives the guidance and tools to make it happen! It shows that positive attributes may stem from negative events in our life. Jill Sklar does any amazing job discussing all of this in the book, very informative and well written! Highly recommended!

-deb kirkland, cancer survivor 12/20/01

This was a great book in getting the feelings and emotions that have been flowing through me out of my head. You start to feel very isolated when you become apart of the cancer community. The relationships change with your pre-cancer days...there is a sense of loss of what life used to be like before illness. I hope this book is the beginning of the many programs and organizations dedicated to the survivor culture. With so many people living longer with chronic illness...no one has taught us how to live with ticking time bomb in our bodies. Hoping this will lead to more help for us lost survivors out there...I have made my caregiver read it so hopefully she'll have a better understanding of why i just can't 'snap out of it'. I would recommend this book for anyone who has chronic illness or any caregiver of a person with a chronic illness to understand what we are going through better.

As a cancer survivor myself, this book helped me to explain what I was going through as a survivor...AFTER treatment was long gone. My husband is reading it now and seems to understand me a bit better.

Jill Sklar presents a very well researched and descriptive book dealing with chronic or near fatal illnesses. Her story is the first told and while it is a sad and depressing tale, I experienced similar treatment from long time 'friends' and acquaintences who I thought would stick by me during the darkest of days.

You can go on living and even thrive after a life changing medical event. My own diagnosis of Multiple Myeloma has changed much about my life, but with the help of Sklar's book and the stories of others collected here who have survived and re-invented their lives and careers, you will be inspired to move past the changes that come from an illness and become stronger. This book has helped me to defy...to the best of my ability the limits (self imposed or otherwise) that my disease was suppose to mean for me.

There is a life after a devastating diagnosis, and the chapter dealing with mourning one's past prior to diagnosis is one of the most important and powerful sections of this wonderful book. Highly recommended.

After eight diagnoses and still no certainty to what is "wrong" I found this book somewhat comforting. I have not found many books that cover the topic of living with an illness and yet how those of us that live with chronic conditions see the world in a different light.

The book has a few too many different examples of different people. From all ready reading her synopsis on her own condition before, reading it again was annoying.

Ms. Sklar's book is encouraging for those who believe there is no cure for chronic illness. Those who would like to be more proactive should investigate the Marshall Protocol to discover new scientific evidence that diseases such as colitis, sarcoidosis, Crohns and multiple sclerosis are now being cured with a safe protocol that uses standard medications in a novel way.