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.
“Vanessa Farnsworth feels lucky that she has lived to tell her story about five years of suffering from a bacterial illness that she apparently contracted from a tick bite that she wasn't aware of. Book readers are lucky that she is an experienced and exceptionally good writer, up to the task of relating a powerful and horrifying personal story while at the same time educating readers on the science of the difficult-to-diagnose tick-borne diseases.”
— Lorne Eckersley, Creston Valley Advance
“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
“You'll find lots of material on Lyme disease from the internet (forums, devoted websites, anecdotes, academic papers etc). Much of what's out there is written from personal experience, some of it harrowing, much of it conflicting, nearly all of it depressing regarding diagnostics and treatment. Vanessa Farnsworth's book, however, is one of the very few that manages to delve deeper into the human psyche (what horrors the mind and soul conjure in the midst of catastrophe),exploding myths surrounding the illness and combining this, as she does, with thorough up-to-date research (2013) on the parasitical bacteria called borrelia. This the author does in a fluent and lucid way.”
— Andrew McGuinness, novelist & lecturer
“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
““I took a five-year vacation from my life." This may sound like a dream, but for Vanessa Farnsworth, it was a nightmare. Before "the vacation," Farnsworth was outdoorsy and active, loving nothing more than hiking the hills around her home in BC's Kootenays. The seizures and paralysis began in 2007 with no warning, no build up. At first, her confused doctors thought she had early stage multiple sclerosis. Then six months in, a test revealed Farnsworth had Lyme disease. It would take her five years to begin feeling normal again. The scariest part: that's typical for the disease that's quietly spreading its range across much of Canada.”
— Ryan Stuart, Explore
CREATIVE NON-FICTION
ISBN: 978-1927426-23-4 ($19.99)
eBook ISBN: 978-1927426-24-1 ($9.99)
Published by Signature Editions.