A new book by Melanie Thernstrom ’87 was reviewed in the New York Times and the Boston Globe last week. Thernstrom's The Pain Chronicles: Cures, Myths, Mysteries, Prayers, Diaries, Brain Scans, Healing, and the Science of Suffering is part memoir, part medical-historical exploration, and both reviewers give it a thumbs-up.
Thernstrom was driven to explore the subject of chronic pain—which affects an estimated 70 million Americans—because she herself "suffers from an arthritic condition that ranges from irritating to incapacitating," Helen Epstein of the Times writes. The book examines how the medical community has approached pain through history; how it is viewed in different cultures; and various approaches to treating it, from neurobiology to acupuncture. In the Globe, Alec Solomita writes that Thernstrom's voice is what pulls readers along:
...it is Thernstrom's personal narrative that keeps the reader turning pages into the night. Told through the haze of suffering and remarkable in its candor, Thernstrom's story is moving, but also puzzling, frustrating, and occasionally enraging....It takes her at least two years to get an MRI and find out why she's in pain. She doesn't even tell her boyfriend (one of a few startlingly callous men she is drawn to) for a year and a half.
Epstein is also won over by Thernstrom's voice:
I cheered as she disentangled romantic from physical pain and found a caring partner. I was dismayed to discover that she found no remedy and that, for the time being, she and millions of others will continue to suffer from chronic pain.
Thernstrom is also the author of Halfway Heaven: Diary of a Harvard Murder.
