Review of Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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. Farnsworth has previously written numerous articles on the disease and now discusses "the inability of doctors to properly diagnose the illness, the absence of reliable medical tests, controversial treatment guidelines, and a public health response that is, at best, problematic." By 2020 , it's estimated that more than 80 percent of the population of eastern Canada will be living in regions where Lyme disease is endemic.


BC Bookworld

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Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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.

In her recently released book, Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada, the Lister resident weaves journal entries with extensive research, much of it undertaken in an effort to come to terms with symptoms that pushed her to consider suicide on more than one occasion.

Vanessa and Michael Farnsworth moved to their rural property south of Goat River in the mid-2000s. Together than ran an Internet tech company. She pursued her vocation as a professional writer and pursued her passion for gardening. She became known to Advance readers as author of a weekly column, The Garden Muse.

And then, at nearly the instant that a dentist's needle filled with Novocain emptied into her jaw, she started a deathly downward spiral into an illness that took six months to diagnose and five years to get to what she describes as 90 per cent of her former self. Now, after a year with no major health setbacks, she knows she might never return to her former self. Gone are the memories of her wedding and graduation from university, among many others. But she has transformed from being quiet and shy into a confident and outspoken woman. It's a tradeoff she's willing to accept.

Now she is about to embark on a national tour to promote her book. Even more importantly, she wants to educate and enlighten the country's population about Lyme disease and other wood tick-related illnesses.

"It was everything - every human illness you could possibly get was all at the same time," said Farnsworth in an interview. "I didn't think I was going to live. I thought what I was doing with those journal entries was recording my own death. At the beginning I didn't even know what that death was going to be from. It struck me early on that something extraordinary was happening to me, so different than anything else. This was not the flu, not something I was familiar with. And I could not understand why my entire body was going haywire and yet somehow I was going to survive - that didn't make sense to me.

"It was six months after the whole thing started before someone put a name - actually two names as you learn in the book - on what the illness was. But it was still very clear to me that I wasn't going to survive unless something extraordinary happened."

The "journal entries" were recreated by Farnsworth from handwritten notes and computer files that she wrote whenever she found the strength and coherence. If they read like scenes from an Alfred Hitchcock movie, the narration that fills the rest of the book sounds like it could have been written by David Suzuki - clear, rational and true to the science that she delved into, largely as a survival mechanism.

"When I started to put this book together, I made a conscious decision to turn the Internet off," she said. "I want to concentrate on the science, so I got and read every scientific paper I could find on the subject."

When she completed the book last spring, Farnsworth submitted the manuscript to four publishers. One replied immediately, saying "they loved the book but had no idea how to market it."

A second, Signature Editions in Winnipeg, quickly snapped up the opportunity to publish it.

"They knew exactly how they wanted to market it," she said.

Lyme disease and other tick-borne diseases affect only a small portion of the population. Now. But with climate changes leading to warmer winters, ticks are no longer killed by icy temperatures at the rate they once were. Within only a few years, it is estimated that most of the Canadian population will be susceptible to the bacteria the pinpoint-sized insects carry. And Farnsworth is eager to share her information.

"There is no chance that the number of Lyme disease cases reported by the Public Health Authority of Canada is even remotely accurate," she said. "The failure of the agency to recognize the existence of the majority of Lyme cases in this country is increasingly placing the health of Canadians at risk."

A Canadian tour will help, and she's already in demand to speak at conferences. Creston Valley residents get their chance to hear readings from the book and to learn more about Lyme disease and its current state of diagnosis and treatment at a book launch this week. Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada will be officially launched at 7p.m. Oct. 25 at The Snoring Sasquatch. Everyone welcome.


— Lorne Eckersley Creston Valley Advance

Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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.

I was interested in this book because I was diagnosed with Lyme disease in early 2013 in the UK, having gone through a similar minefield of misdiagnoses, medical intransigence, not to mention life-affecting symptoms. I've researched Lyme disease quite throroughly myself and can honestly say that Farnsworth's memoir pulls together in one place a great deal of useful information, not only for present and future sufferers of the disease but for G.P.s and neurological consultants who appear to know very little about it themselves.

Rain on a Distant Roof doesn't pull many punches when it comes to the maze of clinical diagnosis, medical mishaps and the problems receiving appropriate treatment for Lyme disease in Canada, and it is exactly the same in the UK. I can naturally empathise with the author, but her book is written well enough to be read by a broader audience from the doctor to the layman. The writing is quite beautiful in places, probably because the author is an experienced, professional writer. I was struck by powerful imagery,for instance, some of it genuinely frightening, balanced by touches of humour and levity.

A must-read for anyone suffering from Lyme disease or caring for someone with the illness, and for anyone in the medical profession who wants to know what it feels like to be a Lyme patient.


— Andrew McGuinness, novelist & lecturer

Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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

Rain on a Distant Roof: A Personal Journey Through Lyme Disease in Canada

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.

Doctors know little about Lyme disease, a mysterious bacteria infection transmitted by several types of tick. Officially considered a "rare disease" with only 50 confirmed cases annually, patient advocates believe tens of thousands of people suffer from Lyme-like symptoms across Canada, but don't fit the strict medical definition or have never tested positive. It's only going to get worse, too. A recent study found that by 2020, 80 per cent of Canadians will live in areas considered endemic for the disease, up 60 per cent from today thanks to global warming and urban expansion — both help boost tick populations.


— Ryan Stuart Explore

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