Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces

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This book is a mirror through which to examine the ways in which society has tidied up illness narratives, in this case those of people with MS, to sell, sculpt and shatter realities that only those living with the condition know. It is a powerful exploration of how to deal with loving relationships under the strain of a new serious diagnosis. The book is dedicated to “M” through whom the writer explores the complicated space of love in the face of devastating diagnosis. On an ordinary day in 2017 a trapdoor opens in the room of an Oxford neurologist’s office and from then on, for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, nothing is the same. In Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces, the weather mirrors the moment as the author watches “a few dead leaves scurrying for cover”. He sits silently waiting for the words from his doctor that will change his life. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial?

Bladder: no alarms are going off just yet, but I will need to remain in a cat-like state of readiness all day The idea that someone who has been forced to adjust nearly every aspect of their lives to suit the demands of their disease should be grateful may sound strange. Yet I cannot help thinking that for all I have lost in recent years, there are also some things I have gained, such as a better sense of proportion, and maybe even a better sense of humour. (Perhaps deep down they are the same thing.) Every day feels like a new adventure in the world of the possible. When I was younger, the idea that my body wouldn’t immediately do what I wanted it to would have been simply inconceivable. Now I realise that this wasn’t just the thoughtlessness of youth. It was the thoughtlessness of health. You may feel that there is already way too much politics in your life right now. But let me whisper it all the same: it seems likely that Johnson at 10: The Inside Story (Atlantic, April), Anthony Seldon’s new book, co-written with Raymond Newell, will be a gripping, if not to say utterly horrifying, read. One Boy, Two Bills and a Fry-Up by Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary (Hodder, August), may be a sight better than the average political memoir, and I’m looking forward to This Is Not America: Why We Need a Different Conversation on Race by Tomiwa Owolade (Atlantic, June). Widening the frame, A Stranger in Your Own City: Travels in the Middle East’s Long War (Hutchinson, March) by the award-winning journalist Ghaith Abdul-Ahad has already been likened by William Dalrymple to Michael Herr’s classic Dispatches. My polemic of the year is the deeply researched and righteously angry Hags: The Demonisation of Middle-Aged Women by Victoria Smith (Fleet, March), a book that could not be more necessary (a sword and a shield) in the current climate.

This began with a first dose of chemotherapy, which meant spending a day being hooked up to a machine that gradually dripped a bag of innocent-looking clear liquid into my veins. It was cyclophosphamide, a highly toxic drug that would kill my blood cells and encourage my stem cells to migrate from my bone marrow into my bloodstream to replace the lost cells. Autologous HSCT (aHSCT) begins with the extraction of the patient’s own stem cells and their storage in a freezer. The patient is then treated with high-dose chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy, a process designed to destroy cancerous cells that also removes the ability of the patient’s bone marrow to grow healthy new blood cells. Finally, the stored stem cells are thawed out and reintroduced into the patient’s bloodstream, where over time they replace the old tissue and allow the body to resume normal blood cell production. In effect, the body is given the help it needs to start repairing itself. MS isn’t uncommon in the UK. It affects around two people in every thousand (the average GP will have three or four patients with MS) and its incidence increases the further north you go – perhaps through a combination of genetic susceptibility and cloudier skies. Twenty years ago, when I worked in Edinburgh’s department of clinical neurosciences, there were few treatments: we used to give infusions of immunoglobulin, and sometimes interferon (a protein that affects signalling between white blood cells). The advice at that time was to withhold treatment until late in the progress of an episode. Though the disease remains incurable there are now various treatments that can slow its progress and diminish its severity. These days my neurology colleagues treat early and aggressively, and there are several immunomodulator drugs available that tweak the actions of the white blood cells involved in generating the plaques. Editor of the Tennyson Research Bulletin, 2002-11, and series editor of the Anthem Press series Nineteenth-Century Studies

If you do nothing, you will be auto-enrolled in our premium digital monthly subscription plan and retain complete access for 65 € per month. Legs: I can feel my toes, but this early in the morning everything from the hips down is stubbornly refusing to do what I want it to; when I stumble downstairs to make a cup of tea in a few minutes, I will look like Frankenstein’s monster dressed in a bathrobe I completed my BA at the University of Cambridge in 1990, before spending a year as a Procter Visiting Fellow at Princeton University. In 1992 I started a PhD at Cambridge, which I completed in 1998. I was elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at Fitzwilliam College in 1995, and the following year I joined Emmanuel College as a Fellow in English. I moved to Magdalen College, Oxford, in 2002 as a Fellow and Tutor and CUF Lecturer in English Language and Literature. In 2015 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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The title is no accident. When a trapdoor opened in Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s life – the abrupt diagnosis, in his 40s, of multiple sclerosis – he couldn’t help thinking of Gregor in Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, a young man who’s changed into a giant beetle, imprisoned in bed, legs waving feebly in the air. It was a shuffling in his legs that had made Douglas-Fairhurst seek medical advice – and now a neurologist confirmed the worst. You may also opt to downgrade to Standard Digital, a robust journalistic offering that fulfils many user’s needs. Compare Standard and Premium Digital here.