The Art of Getting Well (A Five-Step Plan for Maximizing Health When You Have A Chronic Illness)

The Art of Getting Well is written to inspire and help people who are overcoming illness and want to improve their quality of life. Far more than just another list of recommended behaviors and attitudes, it explains how to change the very things in your life that contribute to illness and rob you of motivation in the face of chronic condition.

David Spero has brought together the medical, psychological and spiritual aspects of getting well to create an empowering five- step approach to self-care and recovery that inspires readers to seek wellness, rather than wait for it. These steps ask you to:

Slow Down- Use your energy for the things (and people) that matter most to you.

Make Changes-Build self-confidence through making progressive life changes and choices.

Get Help- Learn to find, ask for and accept the support you need.

Value your body- Treat your body with affection and respect.

Take Responsibility- Educate, accept and assert yourself to get the best care and the best health you can.

The heart of this book is its passionate, powerful message of how you can overcome barries to self-care. Spero suggests ideas and techniques seldom found elsewhere, such as living with rhythm, the intelligence of the body and the role of creativity in recovery.

Written in a conversational upbeat style with interviews and first- person accounts of recovery, this is a unique guide to an important art we seldom think about- the art of embracing health, the art of really getting well.

DAVID SPERO is a nurse, journalist and health educator who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis over twelve years ago. He has over twenty-five years of experience as an R.N./Health Coach and is a trained self- management group leader who works with chronically ill people to maximize their quality of life. He lives in San Francisco, California.

I wrote The Art of Getting Well for two of my favorite kinds of people. First are those, like me, who live with conditions labeled "chronic" or "progressive," who have been told we can't get better, we must get worse, and there's not much we can do about it. Second are people, like me, who get paid as health professionals to help the first group, often botching the job. The book has wider applications, though. Since chronic conditions are so varied, and the issues each brings up are so similar, anyone interested in health and wellness will probably enjoy and benefit from this book.

The Art of Getting Well owes much to the Chronic Disease Self- Management Program, run by Kate Lorig at Stanford University. Leading CDSMP groups taught me that no matter how difficult our lives, how blocked and defeated we seem, there is always a way forward. In these groups, we all help each other, regardless of diagnosis. The experience of a person with one illness will frequently illuminate a path for people with another.

The art of getting well is a martial art, a gentle form of selfdefense. Like a martial art, it emphasizes awareness and balance. Our genetic inheritance, our exposure to harmful environments, our social and economic conditions, our problems with work and relationships, the habits we picked up before we knew better-these are not our fault, but they can damage us. And it is our responsibility to minimize the damage and maximize our well-being. When life makes us sick, we can fight back with self-care. We can change the conditions that injure us and adapt to the things we can- not change. This book provides a host of skills to help you develop y your art, concentrating most of them into five steps: slowing down, getting help. making change, valuing your body and your life, and self-managing your condition.

There are several things you need to know about my friend and colleague David Spero, the author of this wonderful book.

First, he's "been there" in person. He's been a patient and a person living with multiple sclerosis for over twelve years, and he walks his talk, living fully, even thriving with it, in spite of it, and partially because of the way he's responded to it.

Second, he knows what he's talking about on a professional level. David is a registered nurse and a health coach who has specialized for many years in working with people living with chronic illnesses. He's developed curricula for self-care courses, for public health programs, and for scores of individuals from many walks of life with many different health challenges.

Third, he's a really fine writer. I have a confession to make. After thirty years of practicing, researching, writing, speaking, and teaching in the field of holistic medicine, I remain as passionate about the topic as ever-but I am sick of reading books about self-healing. They are generally so repetitive and preachy I can barely stand to look at them. By contrast, I read this book through in one sitting and was left wanting to hear more. David has a gift of making things simple yet interesting, of passing along useful information in a brief, pointed, and often funny way. Once you read the opening chapter title, "Studies Show Life Is Hard," you know you are in the hands of someone who knows what he's talking about.

Finally, David is a kind and generous man who has dedicated himself to helping others. David always signs his e-mails with the phrase "Your friend, David," and he acts that way in all of his interactions.