I loved this book. It was so well rendered in terms of the New England setting and I just thought it was gorgeously done. I would agree with the other reviewers that it was interesting how Douthat does not touch much on how his illness actually affects his life, it's all told in quite broad strokes. Regardless, he is a masterful writer with a very light touch and I thought a lot of his considerations and thoughts were very well done.

The Deep Places by Ross Douthat is a walk through the life altering experience that Ross has been living with Lyme’s Disease. This was a very well written story of the frustrating process of trying to get diagnosed with a disease that is ever changing and difficult to put in a box. It was interesting to see how deeply the disease affected Ross, and also his family, their day-to-day lives, their finances and their careers. I experienced a few health issues that do not fit the norm, so it was nice to read about someone that shares this frustration and how he too struggled with being able to find treatment.

This book made me feel that I wasn’t alone in this and to realize so many people have issues with physicians and disbelief of pain and suffering. This was a great read that showed life can get back to a new normal and can be shared with a new outlook.

I thank Convergent Books and NetGalley for the digital copy and the opportunity to read this extremely interesting book. Opinions here are all my own.

In this book, Ross Douthat, a conservative pundit, recounts his experiences with "chronic Lyme disease" (CLD) -- the term used by some people to describe a broad array of illnesses or symptom complexes for which at this time there is no reproducible scientific evidence to justify its association with Lyme disease. In fact, currently, there is no accepted clinical definition for the phenomenon and only a very small percentage of doctors in the United States and Europe recognize the concept of CLD. This skepticism, in part, stems from the fact that many persons (not all) who claim to suffer from this condition, including the author of this monograph, never tested positive for Lyme disease. This is not to say that the physical suffering experienced by those who claim to have CLD is not real; no doubt it is. The controversy centers on whether Lyme disease is the cause of their long-term suffering and what, if any, treatment is advisable. This controversy over diagnosis and treatment means that those who manifest long-term this broad array of symptoms, which includes fatigue, cognitive dysfunction, headaches, sleep disturbance and other neurologic features, such as demyelinating disease, peripheral neuropathy and sometimes motor neuron disease, cardiac presentations (including electrical conduction delays and dilated cardiomyopathy), and musculoskeletal problems--often find themselves turning to experimental treatments that range from lengthy courses of antibiotic to much more unorthodox alternatives in an effort to find relief from their symptoms, It also means that many who seek treatment encounter doctors who believe the cause of their illness is psychological rather than physical. The author both tried many of these unorthodox treatments and interacted with doctors who thought it was all in his head. Thus, he sets out to present himself as a "fundamentally reliable narrator, open-minded but not naive, vulnerable but not an outright wreck, aware of my own limitations and the possible doubts about my story, but neither paranoid nor mad." And there are times in the narrative where he succeeds; however, at least for this reader, the times when he failed at this endeavor abysmally were more numerous. When I started this book, I had no preconceived ideas about CLD, and in fact knew of some persons through FB who claimed to have this condition. Based on their brief descriptions, it seemed very real; however, after reading this narrative, I am much more skeptical, owing to statements such as the following: "In the beginning only prayers to Mary seemed to have any effect, but then eventually there were reactions when I asked specific saints for help, beginning with my own namesakes--Gregory (my middle name) and Athanasius, which I had pompously adopted upon conversion..." Such statements make it hard to accept his claims of reason or relying on science. Not to mention, by his own admission he was not one for spending time in the great outdoors; if he contracted Lyme disease (again he never tested positive for the disease), it had to have been from the one visit to the country house that they were looking at buying (and ultimately did buy). Although not impossible that he could have been bitten by a tick during this single visit to the countryside and contracted Lyme disease, it is statically unlikely.

I also found this narrative of illness at times tiresome, because the author is so focused on proving the disease is real and describing his self-prescribed methods of treatment that he never delves into the impact of his chronic illness on his marriage and his children. It is a "me" narrative that never really explores how chronic illness impacts loved ones or how it changes family dynamics. Although the author briefly references his wife's skepticism about the cause of his symptoms, he leaves largely unexplored how this skepticism or his obsession with alternative treatments impacted their relationship, what tensions it created, or how it changed daily routines. The sacrifices that family members must have been making so that over the course of six years, he could pursue his self-prescribed path to wellness (including massive doses of antibiotics that left him unable to function or his investment in a machine that produced high-level sound frequencies to kill off the Lyme infection) go mostly unmentioned. There is no sense in this narrative of it "taking a village" to combat chronic illness; there is only the image of lone warrior whose suffering has blinded him to his illness's impact on those who love him. That said, what the author does capture well is the anger and sense of betrayal that chronic sufferers of pain feel towards their own bodies as well as towards the medical community that has let them down. For some, this may be enough to make this a powerful and empowering narrative.

Thanks Netgalley for allowing me to read this book. This book was very informative. Imagine feeling sick and the doctors have no answers for you after realizing you have Lyme disease fir which their is no cure. This book was honest in the emotional toll it takes on the family when a loved one is ill

An insightful and vulnerable look at the toll of a chronic illness that the medical establishment fails to properly address. This story tugs at the heartstrings while at the same time raising feelings of outrage.

Chronic illness of any kind requires a shift in how the world is navigated. Chronic illness that is difficult to diagnose, controversial in medical circles and unpredictable in it's presentation turns the world upside down. Ross Douthat's narrative of the inversion of his life after he contracts lyme disease that is missed in early medical care invites the reader into this world. The book is divided into sections that focus on his experiences but also provide historical framing for Lyme disease and an overview of the multiplicity of pathways, mostly unproven, that people suffering often follow in search of a cure.

It is a very quick and compulsive read, in which Douthat's notable writing skill is evident in the descriptions he provides, narrating his own choices. It is also something of a meditation on what happens when the healthcare system that you've relied on tells you that it can't help or doesn't believe you or simply tells you to live with whatever you have because that's the only option. It is a stark reminder that while privilege and education can help in navigating medical challenges, they have limits - and most of us will, at some point, encounter that.

Mistakenly pushed this review in with the wrong books review. Will be back to submit full review after I finish the book.

Ross Douthat is an American conservative political analyst, blogger, author and New York Times columnist. Prior to 2016, he led an invigorating, purposeful life. He was happily married and loved his young children. He had an elite education and a successful career. Then, in a hideous Stephen King plot twist, he and his family decide to move to the gentrified countryside of Connecticut. They buy an old home that needs extensive repairs. Sadly, this is where his nightmare begins.

Just like a terrifying horror-suspense book, Mr. Douthat is suddenly afflicted with various and debilitating pains, bad feelings, mental confusion which was (probably) a result of Lyme disease. The memoir details his quest for at first a cure, and then just the hope of feeling better. His first recourse was traditional medicine, then he relies more on alternative methods, even developing his own courses of treatment. He connects with the many other Lyme sufferers. His spiritual life also guides him through his healing challenges.

Interestingly, his book ends with the beginning of the COVID pandemic, which also affects him. I think the pandemic has brought home to most of us the feeling that we are all in this together, that medicine can only do so much and we have to rely on our own hope.

Mr. Douthat’s well-written and compelling story taught me that there are many people suffering greatly from puzzling ailments. It also convinced me never to set foot in Connecticut. My heart also went out to Mr. Douthat’s patient and loving wife.

Thanks to NetGalley and Convergent books for an advance digital review copy. This is my honest review.

A beautifully written, fascinating, and worrisome account of the crisis that is chronic Lyme’s disease. The New York Times columnist is eloquent on the frustration of a patient who can get no real answers from doctors on this badly-understood condition. The parallels to long-haul COVID resonate.

A Disease that Doesn’t Exist?

Thousands of Americans suffer chronically from Lyme disease, a mysterious tick-born illness that has surged in pockets of the United States since the 1970s. The symptoms are as varied as the people afflicted, and conventional treatment protocols often provide scant relief. Yet despite an array of extremely painful symptoms, much of modern medicine dismisses these patients, often implying that mental health is the root cause, not an actual physical disease. So what do you do when doctors believe you have an affliction that doesn't really exist? You can succumb to resignation and despair, or perhaps live with the cognitive dissonance between what your body tells you and what your doctor tells you. But there's a third path: you go down the rabbit hole of alternative medicine, into the realm of off-the-wall treatments, untested remedies, and borderline pseudoscience.

Ross Douthat, conservative columnist at the New York Times, picked path #3, and what a wild ride it was.

The narrative begins as he and his wife decided to leave urban life and pursue a property in Connecticut--a homestead apparently of their dreams: an idyllic country setting, a rural plot where life could slow down, they could raise their kids in stability, and Ross could leisurely putt around and maintain the grounds. Alas, it was not to be. His illness broke into daily life, both before and after they moved, and his chronic symptoms and attempts to treat them were interspersed with a series of property incidents that anyone with a mortgage knows intimately as Homeowner Hell. After a few years of constant struggle, they sold the property at a major loss, yet were still relieved to escape it.

The Hidden Life of the Chronic Sufferer

One observation that stood out to me was that, although the chronic pain was persistent and often debilitating, the worst of Douthat's experience was the fear of dying, of being absent from his family. "Early the next morning I woke in the hotel with a burning sensation all around my throat, and I went to the mirror and saw that my entire upper torso was as red as a Soviet banner. Then I felt the old summertime pressure on my chest, the horrible closing-up feeling in my throat, and I was sure that I was going to die there, alone in a hotel room. I called the front desk, gagging, and begged for an ambulance. As I waited for it to come, I prayed and scrolled through pictures of my kids, the fear that I would leave them fatherless returning in a rush."

Douthat quotes and comments on writer Scott Alexander: "In the same way that 'we filter for people who are like us intellectually and politically, we also filter for misery,' so that the suffering around us passes unheard and unseen." [Loc 1153]. As someone who has never dealt with chronic pain, getting into Douthat's head was a truly eye-opening experience. His reflections generated empathy and compassion for some people in my life and community that suffer under various chronic ailments, or suffer watching a child with a terminal illness steadily decline. I suspect these friends and family would find great catharsis in reading this book, would discover an eloquent painting of their own struggle.

The narrative is interspersed with insightful reflections on the difficulties of being perpetually unwell. Not just the physical/medical ones--those are obvious--but also the awkward social realities. "People [often] behave well, with great generosity, in the face of a mortal diagnosis, a mental collapse, an addict's nadir. Not least because in those circumstances there are things you can clearly do.... But when the crisis simply continues without resolution, when the illness grinds on and on and on--well, then a curtain tends to fall, because there isn't an obvious way to integrate that kind of struggle into the realm of everyday life."

Struggling under chronic Lyme tested but ultimately strengthened Douthat’s Christian faith. He specifically lays claim to the comfort afforded by a worldview where pain and suffering have meaning. "To believe that your suffering is for something, that you are being asked to bear up under it, that you are being in some sense supervised and tested and possibly chastised in a way that’s ultimately for your good, if you can only make it through the schooling—all this is tremendously helpful to maintaining simple sanity and basic hope." [Loc 1293] And he observes insightfully that philosophical complaints over theodicy have it exactly backwards: "the real Christian answer to the 'problem' of suffering is that we have the problem all wrong, that it’s actually more mysterious when good things happen to good people than when bad things do, because if God gave His son to the cross, then a version of the same test is what every Christian should expect." [1305]

I expect this book to be a cool balm of understanding to the chronic sufferer, and an eye-opening revelation of that world for the rest of us who aren’t afflicted.

Taking the Red Pill

Even with all the above, the most fascinating part of The Deep Places was having a front-row seat to Douthat getting red-pilled to the hypocrisies, corruption, group think, and obtuse idiosyncrasies of mainstream medicine. Even more importantly, his reflections bring deep and timely value to our hottest contemporary global issue, one that runs parallel to, and shares many similarities with, the Lyme experience. More on that in a bit.

Douthat is an intellectual by trade, a reasoner and a synthesizer of information and arguments. His abundance of curiosity and his relentless desire to understand truths pushed him deep into the world (one might say the underbelly) of Lyme medicine and treatment protocols. The deeper he went, and the more rocks he overturned, Douthat discovered that the polished world of Official Medicine is incomplete at best, in some places even corrupt.

"The deeper I went into the world of the chronically sick, the more people I met, the more testimonials and case histories I read, and the more I familiarized myself with the scientific background of the debate, the more impossible—and infuriating—it seemed that an entire medical establishment could be ignoring, denying, and dismissing the scale of suffering taking place all around them, not in some far-distant or exotic place but in their own hometown, their children’s schools, the street or house next door."[Loc 934]

He experienced this himself, with at least one doctor gently offering to refer him to a psychiatrist, insinuating he needed a mental health evaluation. But this casual insult drove him instead to pursue unorthodox answers. Despite initial skepticism, Douthat eventually became desperate enough that he was willing to try almost anything to alleviate his pain, to fight off the illusive bacteria coursing through his blood that is impervious even to a bleach treatment in a laboratory. His self-treatment took him to magnets, audio frequencies (with great success), acupuncture (briefly), intravenous vitamin C, tons of bottles of antibiotics and natural supplements, including various herbs. He even purchased medications of dubious quality from online pet stores so he could acquire them without a prescription.

It was his inability to relieve the chronic pain or get satisfying answers from his doctors that drove him to experiment with treatments he would have casually dismissed with a scoff prior to getting Lyme, treatments which directly contradict mainstream wisdom. And he defends the scientific and methodological validity of his tactics with an eloquence I found refreshing:

"The initial task of battling my disease with half-understood medicines, the self-doctoring that I found myself doing, was in its own way intensely empirical and materially grounded—the most empirical work, in fact, that I have ever attempted in my life. Empirical, to be clear, doesn’t mean meeting the rigorous standard for FDA approval. But neither does it mean wandering a natural-foods store with a dowsing rod and popping whatever supplement the metal points you toward, or keeping a dream journal and then parsing it for subconscious codes that spell out the herbal remedies you need. Nobody who experiments on medicine’s frontiers has to sally forth at random. They can follow the wisdom of crowdsourcing, the accumulated testimony of other sufferers, attacking their own N of 1 with the benefit of a larger sample, which, even if its results aren’t subject to placebo-controlled trials or peer review, still offers evidence rather than pure guesswork, data rather than just individual anecdote." [Loc 1508]

But Douthat, ever the needle threader, still retained the ability to see both sides of the argument. He understood that there are multiple legitimate ways to frame and interpret data, and why the natural incentives and worn footpaths of mainstream medicine would develop the way they did.

"[...] But then again, I could also see how the divide sustained itself, because the deeper I went into the world of chronic sickness, the more I could feel the tug of paranoia, the sense that the world is not as I had imagined and who knows what else might be true. I could feel the experience of illness and bafflement remaking me, and I could see in other people how far this remaking could go—well beyond just taking extra antibiotics and doubting the wisdom of the CDC, into a more comprehensive rejection of any establishment wisdom, any mainstream consensus." Loc 938]

Lyme vs the Pandemic

And now to address the track running parallel in my mind to Douthat's Lyme journey.

For the average person who has little awareness of Lyme, no knowledge of its controversial history, and certainly no formed opinions about the sharp divide it's fomented within the medical establishment over the years, Douthat's account and reflections provide a unique opportunity for the reader to engage deep questions of health and wellness, treatment protocols, and their intersection with politicized science--all with a level of objectivity and detachment, sans emotional and political baggage, that is almost impossible elsewhere. You know exactly what I'm referring to: the real-time global debate around COVID-19. The fact that all the topics Douthat engages with regard to Lyme also exist within the hottest contemporary controversy ripped from today’s headlines provides an opportunity of great magnitude and Providence.

Douthat carefully describes the two camps that rose up around Lyme within the medical community, and the cause of the rift: "the CDC guidelines essentially ratified the split already opening in the 1980s, between an official understanding of the disease and a dissenting view, between a medical establishment that felt satisfied with how it diagnosed and treated this novel-seeming pathogen and a growing population of patients and sufferers (or self-described sufferers, at least) who felt ignored, abandoned, and betrayed. It created not just two worldviews but two cultures, two concentric circles of insiders and outsiders—the inner one confident and authoritative and buoyed by institutional support, the outer one more fluid and open-minded but also necessarily more peculiar and paranoid and sometimes, frankly, gonzo in its theories and experiments."

Douthat clearly has one foot in each camp here (and I'm referring to both the Lyme and Covid debates—so make that four feet?). He obviously prefers the more formal, regimented, and systematic approach to data collection and analysis that is (often, but not exclusively) the hallmark of mainstream science (when it lives up to its aspirations, that is). Yet there are some lines even he won't cross, or at least is quick to note his position on: vaccine hesitancy, for example, is beyond the outer ranges of what he deems acceptable skepticism of mainstream science, as is the idea that Big Pharma owns the media. Although there are certainly extremes in both of these positions, I'm frankly surprised he retained such a reflexive insistence on both claims.

But he also readily affirms the legitimacy of the trial and error, small-scale treatments that doctors and patients in the medical wild west try out. As defended above, they may not be double-blind randomized controlled trials, but they are no less methodical or valuable for developing effective personalized treatment protocols.

In some ways, Lyme and COVID are very similar. Both have an underworld of treatments that are looked down upon or ignored by orthodox medicine. But their paths diverge at a hard-to-ignore reality: COVID controversies have been treated vastly differently—scientifically and culturally--than Lyme.

I totally understand if mainstream doctors and public health officials are skeptical of various proposed treatments for COVID-19. But what I don't understand, or at least what I cannot explain charitably, is all the censorship, suppression and propaganda against them and in favor of the vaccines. Douthat describes two broad camps of doctors who treat Lyme patients with varying degrees of openness to unorthodox treatment protocols. Imagine if the entire public health establishment came down with an iron fist on all the methods with which the latter camp researched and experimented. It's one thing to respond to unapproved treatments with silence, or even disparagement. But imagine if the mainstream bureaucracies went even further, if pharmacies and state medical boards stepped into the heretofore sacred doctor-patient relationship and blocked their ability to prescribe disapproved drugs. Imagine if all of Big Tech and the social media companies colluded to suppress any content questioning the Approved Narrative or that expressed support for alternative Lyme treatments? What if YouTube updated their formal community guidelines with reference to drugs commonly used to treat Lyme and forbade the world from discussing it on their platform? What if they deleted footage of a credentialed physician testifying to Congress about the evidence supporting his protocols? Yet all of these things have happened in the last 18 months with COVID-19. The level of censorship and ostracizing in the COVID-era is utterly shocking and unprecedented.

Thank God it hasn’t happened with Lyme. Why is it happening now with COVID?

Douthat contracted COVID and suffered from the long haul version for months after. His recent familiarity with the medical underworld and a nascent trust in his own analysis found expression in interesting, one might say contradictory ways: “When the seriousness of the coronavirus threat hadn’t yet become a partisan issue and the mood among mainstream experts was sanguine, I was staring at grainy videos from Wuhan and reading dire predictions from right-wing eccentrics. If I had learned anything from almost five years of illness, it was to trust my own read on a situation at least as much I trusted reassurances from the medical establishment. So I gave up handshaking before anybody else I knew; I was the only non-Asian mask wearer on a cross-country flight; I filled our cellar with toilet paper and canned goods weeks before the shortages began; I stockpiled masks when we were still being told they didn’t work.” [Loc 2222] “And long before it was picked up by Donald Trump, back when it was just an internet theory based on French and Chinese trials, I knew all about hydroxychloroquine—which had been prescribed to me long ago, in a bottle that still had a few pills remaining, which I now found and took.” [Loc 2247]

What fascinates and flummoxes me is how Douthat's Lyme experience so clearly illustrates and confirms an insight I've had about COVID and other controversial topics: the primary disagreement is almost never over facts, but over narrative and framing. The structure, the paradigm, the context in which we place and organize facts relative to each other is the key driver of our interpretations and conclusions, not the facts themselves. In one sense, this is an obvious truism. No serious or thoughtful person disputes it. Yet that recognition gets lost amidst all the appeals to authority, the demands to "just trust the science," to “wear the damn mask,” etc.

“The science” has not really ever been the main problem for the so-called COVID skeptic crowd, although there certainly are disagreements about the accuracy and relevance of the data. (Can we trust the official death tallies? Are we in a "casedemic?” Do high PCR cycles inflate the numbers and generate unnecessary fear?) For those who distrust the CDC, NIH, WHO and the amalgamated, miasmic sludge of advocacy from corporate journalism, doctors, local public health officials, politicians, Big Tech and Big Social, the most offensive element of their output is not the outright lies, the deceptive nature of their unified propaganda about the science, but what is missing entirely from the public discussion--namely, the obvious profit incentives in play by the pharmaceutical companies combined with the liability protection provided by the state, the myriad other costs to our pandemic response (economic, psychological, educational, medical-but-not-COVID-related, social), and the fingers-in-the-ears refusal to acknowledge that official guidance seems to shift every five minutes. “Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

Douthat on Lyme, but which is also applicable to COVID: “It’s completely understandable that the medical establishment doesn’t want to officially endorse any of the various unproven paths. But there’s a difference between declining to endorse a single path and ruling further treatment out entirely, a difference between acknowledging the diverse attempts to treat them.” [Loc 2504]

Did He Find Relief?

Was Douthat’s descent into the medical underworld successful? Did he cure his Lyme disease and beat back the chronic pain? You’ll have to read it to find out. If you’re a suffer yourself and need an eloquent reflection to put words to your afflictions, or a blessedly healthy person who could benefit from a more empathetic understanding of your fellow man, this is worth a read. If you tend to believe the claims of unorthodox medicine and wonder if a highly educated, wealthy WASP member of the elite intellectual class could possibly come to share that openness, read this book. If you are in the tribe that believes whatever the CDC puts in their press releases is the sum total of objective science, you should definitely read this book, although the struggle to shed your preconceived notions may be painful. The good news is that—hopefully--it won’t be a chronic pain, but rather a short-term cleansing one.

Wow, this book was so timely and thought provoking. A really deep dive into the chronic illness associated with Lime disease. I was unaware of how hard it was to find effective treatments or even Dr's who would believe him. It was sometimes hard to read about how much he was suffering.

I had to wait a few days after reading this let it all sink in. There are a lot of controversial theories on the origin and treatments that I had not known previously. And then Douthat brings in the Covid pandemic aspect and my mind was blown. He mainly stays away from the political arguments which I really appreciated.

Really powerful book and he did a great job describing all of the viewpoints without taking a side even though he was deeply affected by chronic disease. I would highly recommend it.

I'm not sure why but I tend to like memoirs relating to illness. This one contained strong writing and as is the usual the author left himself vulnerable and exposed. There were many very insightful thoughts, some quotes by others and some the authors own, including "Pain is always new to the sufferer, but lots its originality for those around him" by Alphonse Daudet in the 19th century. I did find myself skimming some sections of the book, especially some of the deeper dives into the history of his disease. Overall I found this book informative and engaging.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me with an early release in exchange for a fair and honest review.

I received an advance copy of, The Deep Places, by Ross Douthat. Ross has an invisible disease. He went to a vast number of doctors in different states, to finally get a diagnosis, Lyme disease.

The Deep Places is a profoundly personal account of one man’s struggle to find answers to the physical issues that beset him. This is an important book in the world of questions and doubts about the veracity/extent/treatment of Lyme’s Disease, and the author does a tremendous service by sharing both his wisdom and the insights he gained during this difficult time. This is not an easy read, but it will be helpful to anyone who is dealing with similar struggles to get the right medical care.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing a copy of this book.

Though this book provides a clear picture of what it can be like trying to get a diagnosis when the tests show no clear evidence of any disease, it was overwhelming in what came across as self-pity. I keep hoping for a new story, not the same one over and over. Though I did learn about the various camps with regards to Lyme disease and learned that Connecticut is the epicenter for Lyme disease, it was a difficult read.

Loved the transparency and willingness to share his and his family's story. Interesting book.

Thanks to author, publisher and Netgalley for the chance to read this book. While I got the book for free, it had no bearing on the rating I gave it.

In The Deep Places, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat shares his mystifying, diagnosis-defying, years with an illness that is probably Lyme Disease as well as another deer tick-borne illness. Mr. Douthat has written about this in shorter form in earlier columns in the Times.

Here, he shares an eternity of bizarre symptoms that strike at random an his search for a cure, or at least relief, from allopathic and alternative medicine to treatments that can only be described as fringe. While he doesn’t resort to licking Arizona River Toads (an animal so toxic that it kills dogs who lick it), he comes close in some of the off the charts of medicine both accepted and not accepted that he employed to rid himself of years of pain, brain fog, random twitches, and a whole host of other symptoms.

Mr. Douthat is a very gifted writer, whose columns I read in the Times, even though our political leanings might often conflict. There is nothing political about this saga at all, unless the not quite said condemnation of Western medicine’s lack of openness to alternative treatments. This book is a meditation on pain and suffering that is almost spiritual. To be invited into his world and to travel the roads taken and not usually taken is a gift to the reader. Bravo to Mr. Douthat for inviting us to share his darkest hours as well as his triumphs.

Mr. Douthat’s attitude throughout this journey was to never give up. I hope that if I am ever challenged as he was that I will comport myself with such grace.

I really enjoyed this book. Character development was good. The plot was very interesting. Not a lot of typos.

Nostalgic for the rural New England they’d grown up in, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat and his wife, science writer Abigail Tucker, sold their row house in a recently gentrified Washington, DC neighbourhood for a great price and bought an old home on a large property in Connecticut. Their fantasy about the richness and wonder of country living didn’t last long. You could argue that their “folly” was exposed before Douthat, his pregnant wife, and their two young daughters had even moved into the quaint 1790s-era house. In the spring of 2015, the two-hour home inspection revealed the need for major repairs that would require significant expenditures. The outdoor portion of the inspection would also leave the author with a bite from a tick carrying both Lyme disease (Borrelia Burgdorferi, a shape-shifting spirochete bacterial disease that can evade the immune system) and the Bartonella bacterium.

Shortly after the inspection, Douthat woke one morning with a stiff neck and a painful, enlarged lymph node, a few inches below one ear. A DC walk-in-clinic doctor diagnosed a boil and prescribed mild antibiotics. However, the symptoms persisted, and a new one was added: a peculiar vibration in the patient's head. Several weeks later, Douthat had to cancel a journalists’ trip to Italy, as he now had widespread chest pain, a gagging feeling in his throat, and liquefied bowels. The vibratory sensation initially felt only in the head was now ranging throughout the body. He consulted multiple doctors—an internist, neurologist, rheumatologist, and infectious diseases specialist—and had innumerable medical tests, including an upper endoscopy when his GI symptoms had became overwhelming and he’d lost a lot of weight. The Lyme tests, notoriously unreliable, were inconclusive. Ultimately, as recommended by the physicians who could find nothing wrong with him, he saw a Connecticut psychiatrist who told him his illness wasn’t stress-related; it certainly wasn’t psychiatric; indeed, she was certain his symptoms pointed to tick-borne disease, which the DC doctors evidently didn’t see much of.

Douthat’s memoir covers his six-year ordeal with chronic Lyme Disease, his desperate search for doctors who might help, and the significant controversies around diagnosis and treatment (which bear some remarkable similarities to the heated public disagreements and polarization over Covid-19). Increasingly, the narrow official line of the medical community is being abandoned as scientific evidence grows that Lyme Disease, like cancer, can trick and evade immune defenses. Douthat tried multiple antibiotics, combinations of antibiotics, and non-antibiotic antimicrobials, including herbs. He was supervised by various doctors, some of whom had caught the attention of state medical regulatory boards for their eyebrow-raising treatment regimes. He also did a fair bit of very unorthodox (even wacky) experimentation on himself, collecting “anecdata” about his own symptoms and reactions to drugs, supplements, and devices. His memoir is not essentially a religious one, but Douthat, a Catholic, acknowledges that desperate, pleading prayer figured in his self-treatment, and his faith offered a way to frame his suffering when he felt he was at the end of his rope, which was apparently often.

In spite of its relative brevity, <i><b>The Deep Places</i></b> is a wide-ranging book. Douthat includes a short history of Lyme disease —including a discussion of a conspiracy theory about its origins in a bioweapons lab on an island in Long Island Sound. The controversies around the condition, its impact on the family, and the ways in which chronic illness transforms the sufferer (physically, psychologically, spiritually, and financially) are also considered. While I wish Douthat had provided a bibliography, he does leave enough hints about sources in the body of his text for the interested reader to follow up on. I particularly recommend the article that alerted him to what he was really dealing with: Alexis Tsoulis-Reay’s June 2015 interview with Dr. Neil Spector, an oncologist and professor at Duke University’s School of Medicine. Spector had chronic Lyme that went undiagnosed for years, and he ultimately required a heart transplant as a result.
https://www.thecut.com/2015/06/what-its-like-to-have-severe-lyme-disease.html

This is an engaging and illuminating read about one person’s ordeal and his attempt to make meaning of it. Douthat explains that he wrote it for other sufferers, who “are more numerous than the healthy ever realize,” to encourage them to experiment and possibly save their own lives, “but also for the skeptical doctors and doubtful experts who are so often the targets of long-suffering Lyme patients’ fury and suspicion, in hopes of convincing them to see more clearly the enfleshed reality of a chronic, life-stealing disease.”

Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with a copy.