Up the Down Escalator

September 1, 2023
A physician's life juggling a busy career and motherhood is further complicated by multiple sclerosis. In 2009 Doggett, while working on her personal efficiency in her clinical practice and raising two young children, began experiencing unexplained dizziness and double vision. "This time, I was the medical mystery," she writes. "I kept racking my brain for an explanation and willing myself to make it disappear." A diagnosis of MS refocused her energies, and she embarked on a wellness journey, bolstered by community connections yet hobbled by unpredictable relapses, depression, denial, sleeplessness, and, eventually, hard-won acceptance. The author, co-founder of Texas Physicians for Social Responsibility, writes candidly about the challenges of treating uninsured patients, many of whom suffered from mental illness and chronic disease. Doggett highlights a wide variety of clinical cases, tapping into the "intimate connection with misery" she has experienced with her own illness during her career. Thankfully, the author sprinkles in lighthearted moments--e.g., an anecdote about meeting her future husband, Donny, at a party at MIT. Most memorable are Doggett's knowledgeable perspectives on the countless thorny aspects of American health care. She wrestles with an "unfair and unethical" system that "value[s] quantity over quality, and procedures--biopsies, surgeries, colonoscopies--over face-to-face time and the thinking part of medicine." She also struggles with the unavailability of birth control for those who need it and the complex paradox of health insurance. The author presents a real-time narration of her spinal tap procedure, and she consistently demonstrates her resilience and personal growth. The text is smoothly and meaningfully narrated, and her testimony validates those living with chronic illnesses while offering hope in the form of new and proactive avenues toward symptom management. Readers struggling with MS (or careerdom and motherhood) will find much to ponder and appreciate in Doggett's candid perspective. An affecting account of living fully with a difficult disease.

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