Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada
By Vanessa Farnsworth
Rain on a Distant Roof takes readers inside the frightening but fascinating world of Lyme disease in Canada.
This is the story of one woman's struggle to understand the disease that’s destroying her body and mind. Armed with a confusing diagnosis, a baffling array of symptoms, and a body that’s filled with diabolical bacteria, she sets out to unravel the mysteries of her malady. Along the way, she discovers challenges in properly diagnosing and treating the illness, deficits in medical testing, conflicts among medical guidelines, and a public health response that is, at best, problematic. She also discovers the bizarrely intelligent bacteria at the bottom of it all, an organism so complex and perplexing that more than 30 years after it was first discovered, researchers are still having trouble nailing it down.
This groundbreaking book, a compelling mixture of biography and scientific discovery, is a must-read for anyone who spends time in nature or even their own backyard.
“Rain on a Distant Roof is an excellent read. I recommend it. Our politicians at all levels and physicians of every ilk should read it as well.”
— Jim Wilson, President Canadian Lyme Disease Foundation
“Rain on a Distant Roof offers thought-provoking insight into the daily struggles and obstacles faced by Chronic Lyme disease patients. Vanessa Farnsworth's self-described, "tick-shattered life," is an all too common but seldom told story of desperately ill Canadians caught in a healthcare nightmare.”
— Susan McInnis, President Lyme Disease Association of Alberta
“Rain on a Distant Roof offers uncompromising access to a very personal experience with Lyme disease. Farnsworth combines a journalist’s tenacity with a writer’s sensibility, presenting her struggle with the disease but also with a health care system that too often leaves sufferers misdiagnosed and undersupported. Farnsworth is articulate, passionate, invested, well-informed, and vital. Her book is a clarion call to pay attention to a serious health crisis in the making.”
— Charlene Diehl, Director Winnipeg International Writers Festival
“A mixture of biography and science, Vanessa Farnsworth's Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada not only introduces the reader to the bizarrely intelligent bacterium at the root of Lyme disease, it recounts the Creston, B.C. resident's own horrendous battle with the disease since 2007.”
— BC Bookworld
CREATIVE NON-FICTION
ISBN: 978-1927426-23-4 ($19.99)
eBook ISBN: 978-1927426-24-1 ($9.99)
Published by Signature Editions.
