West Nile Diary: One Couple's Triumph Over a Deadly Disease [Paperback]

Kathleen Gibson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2009

BEFORE THE MOSQUITO BITE, Rick Gibson was an active pastor, a supportive husband, and a doting grandfather.

After the bite, diagnosed with West Nile neurological disease, he was a hospital patient in the grip of relentless pain, forced to relearn the body’s most basic tasks: how to roll over, sit up, stand, walk, and even how to think.

Now, in West Nile Diary, his wife, Kathleen, recalls how the two of them battled the disease together, armed with Scripture, prayer, love, humour, and loads of determination. It is a story not only of their growth as a couple, but also of their entry into a whole new ministry to those facing their own health and spiritual crises.

West Nile Diary, will make you laugh, cry, and resolve never to park in a handicapped parking spot again.

“Entertaining, deeply moving, and immensely helpful.”
-- Phil Callaway, author of Honey, I Dunked the Kids

“Absorbing, well written, and full of the spiritual resources of hope.”
-- Dr. Maxine Hancock, Professor of Spiritual Theology, Regent College

“Vivid, accurate, and full of detail and pathos. A good read from start to finish.”
-- Dickson Despommier, author of West Nile Story

Kathleen Gibson has written for media worldwide and is editor of Prairies North, Saskatchewan’s magazine for good prairie living.

Product Details

• Paperback: 184 pages
• Publisher: BPS Books (March 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1926645014
• ISBN-13: 978-1926645018
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,405,446 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I began growing up in a small brown house beside a Pacific inlet, next to a green, green park. With foghorns bellowing in the background, I learned to love words and the Word, family and friends, animals and art.

Plus a few other things.

I've been writing and speaking about all that for decades as a freelance writer and broadcaster of primarily personal essays, for media outlets large and small, local and global. (Including for Reader's Digest, one of the magazines always kept in the basement bathroom of the little brown house.) Along the way I've taken a few detours to teach writing and edit a magazine. I continue to write Sunny Side Up, a Christian faith and life newspaper column, published in my local paper.

Plus a few other places.

The mosquito that infected my clergyman husband, Rick, with West Nile Neurological Disease badly messed up our lives. Made them beautiful like a mosaic. It also spurred my first book, West Nile Diary, One Couple's Triumph Over a Deadly Disease. Next came the first in an in-process series, Practice by Practice--The Art of Everyday Faith, reader-requested compilations of past Sunny Side Up columns, in which I admit to having been a practicing Christian for years--and yet, far from perfect, but for Christ in me.

In my columns I shamelessly use family and friends as fodder.

Plus a few other people.

These days, I'm growing up in a small white house on the Prairie, in the middle of a green, green yard in the global community of New Normal. With a parrot often squawking in the background, and my recovering husband beside me, I wrestle beauty and brokenness; words and the Word--and practice and plead to bring both of those to the world, for God's glory. And I still love family and friends, animals and art.

You can find me at www.kathleengibson.ca/ and occasionally on Facebook and www.twitter.com/kathleenggibson

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Of pirates and angels - a capitvating memoir, June 30, 2009

By 

Violet E. Nesdoly (Vancouver, BC Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: West Nile Diary: One Couple's Triumph Over a Deadly Disease (Paperback)

It was in mid-August of 2007 that Rick Gibson got the mosquito bite - a most unexceptional thing to happen at a picnic in Yorkton, Saskatchewan. But days later he was in the throes of such mysterious and disparate symptoms, it took a while for doctors to come up with a diagnosis - West Nile Neurological Disease (WNND).

Over the next months his wife Kathleen Gibson rode the roller coaster ride of WNND with him. In West Nile Diary she tells their story from the vantage point of his hospital bedside in Yorkton and the Wascana Rehabilitation Center in Regina. In journal entries, emails to friends and family, newspaper columns, and articles, Gibson journeys us through a six-month interlude that changes the course of this couple's life forever.

The book does more than just tell a story, though. For in the telling, Gibson touches on many topics, among them the possibility of divine healing, the purpose of sickness and pain, the beautiful people found in unexpected places, the importance of family, the need for advocacy, what really matters in life, and the key role that faith in God plays when handling such crises.

Gibson (long a successful freelance writer and editor), puts her skills to good use in this memoir. She displays the sensitivity to beauty of a poet. Her penchant for detail is journalistic. There are passages of welcome comic relief where she combines an eye for the humorous with the timing of a comedian. Her skillful combination of all of the above result in a story that takes us past circumstances to an understanding of heart truths. Though the pirates of West Nile (her description of the disease) could have scuttled the Gibsons' boat, they didn't. In fact, just the opposite happened.

This inspirational story will not only encourage you to keep hope and determination alive in the worst circumstances, but will also educate you about West Nile Neurological Disease. Don't be surprised if after reading it, you find yourself at the local drugstore or supermarket loading up on mosquito repellent.