{"product_id":"a-whole-new-life-an-illness-and-a-healing-9780743238540","title":"A Whole New Life: An Illness and a Healing","description":"Reynolds Price has long been one of America's most acclaimed and accomplished men of letters -- the author of novels, stories, poems, essays, plays, and a memoir. In \u003ci\u003eA Whole New Life, \u003c\/i\u003e however, he steps from behind that roster of achievements to present us with a more personal story, a narrative as intimate and compelling as any work of the imagination. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn 1984, a large cancer was discovered in his spinal cord (The tumor was pencil-thick and gray-colored, ten inches long from my neck-hair downward). Here, for the first time, Price recounts without self-pity what became a long struggle to withstand and recover from this appalling, if all too common, affliction (one American in three will experience some from of cancer). He charts the first puzzling symptoms; the urgent surgery that fails to remove the growth and the radiation that temporarily arrests it (but hurries his loss of control of his lower body); the occasionally comic trials of rehab; the steady rise of severe pain and reliance on drugs; two further radical surgeries; the sustaining force of a certain religious vision; an eventual discovery of help from biofeedback and hypnosis; and the miraculous return of his powers as a writer in a new, active life. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e Beyond the particulars of pain and mortal illness, larger concerns surface here -- a determination to get on with the human interaction that is so much a part of this writer's much-loved work, the gratitude he feels toward kin and friends and some (though by no means \u003ci\u003eall)\u003c\/i\u003e doctors, the return to his prolific work, and the now appalling, now astonishing grace of God. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e \u003ci\u003eA Whole New Life\u003c\/i\u003e offers more than the portrait of one brave person in tribulation; it offers honest insight, realistic encouragement and inspiration to others who suffer the bafflement of catastrophic illness or who know someone who does or will.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Scribner Book Company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/24\/2003\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780743238540\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.65lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.40h x 5.40w x 0.70d","brand":"Reynolds Price","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":36641381286044,"sku":"9780743238540","price":15.29,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/products\/img_af402f74-8c82-403c-a283-2901a101940b.jpg?v=1603853493","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/a-whole-new-life-an-illness-and-a-healing-9780743238540","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}